GIFT   OF 


. 


NO.  26  JAYNE  STREET 


NO.  26  JAYNE  STREET 


BY 

MARY  AUSTIN 

Author  of  "The  Ford"  "Isidro,"  "A  Woman  of  Genius,"  etc. 


BOSTON    AND    NEW    YORK 

HOUGHTON  MIFFLIN  COMPANY 

The  Riverside  Press  Cambridge 
1920 


COPYRIGHT,    1920,   BY  MARY   AUSTIN 
ALL   RIGHTS   RESERVED 


NO.  26  JAYNE  STREET 
BOOK  I 


41C668 


NO.  26  JAYNE  STREET 
I 


THE  lease  was  signed  on  the  23d  of  February,  in  Pepe 
Brothers'  basement  office,  at  the  right-hand  corner  of 
the  Square  where  you  turn  into  it  from  Macdougal 
Street  and  Fourth  Avenue. 

Between  pride  of  possession  and  the  difficulty  of  ex 
plaining  the  matter  satisfactorily  to  the  Aunts,  Neith 
was  conscious  of  a  note  of  flatness  in  the  determined 
resistance  of  Pepe  Brothers  to  any  sort  of  pleasantness 
between  themselves  and  their  client,  which  might  be 
brought  up  against  them  in  the  ever-present  possibility 
of  deferred  payments.  Once,  however,  she  was  away 
from  the  crabbed  atmosphere  of  the  renting  office,  Neith 
gave  rein  to  exhilaration. 

It  was  all  rather  formless  and  out  of  proportion  to  the 
occasion.  There  was  little  in  the  leasing  of  three  rooms 
with  bath  and  kitchenette  at  Twenty-Six  Jayne  Street, 
which  should  have  carried  such  a  lift  with  it,  particularly 
as  one  of  the  rooms,  except  for  a  narrow  slit  of  half 
walled-up  window,  was  dark,  and  the  plumbing  doubt 
ful.  But  for  a  month  or  six  weeks  past  the  fringes  of 
Neith  Schuyler's  consciousness  had  been  stirred  by  the 
Wind  before  the  Morning.  Premonitions  of  form  and 


4 


NO.  26  JAYNE  STREET 


order  were  making  their  way  toward  her  across  the  social 
confusions  which,  ever  since  the  first  week  in  August, 
1914,  had  wrapped  her  like  a  cloud.  The  taking  of  the 
lease  had  been  an  almost  instinctive  movement  of  her 
rather  shy  soul  to  be  alone  with  the  approaching  guest. 

Now  that  it  was  accomplished,  she  thought  she  might 
as  well  go  home  and  tell  the  Aunts  about  it,  but  the  in 
vitation  of  spring  that  dripped  from  the  soft  air,  in  the 
clear  round  chirp  of  the  sparrows,  kept  her  moving  cor- 
nerwise  across  the  Square.  Tiny  points  of  green  showed 
overhead  among  the  moving  branches,  like  flecks  of  the 
nameless  exhilaration  in  her  mind.  Instead  of  turning 
at  the  Arch  toward  the  red-brick  bulwark  of  Old  New 
York's  last  stand  against  the  tides  of  social  change,  she 
moved  without  intention  up  the  Avenue,  toward  the 
church  under  whose  square  towers  in  the  old  family  pew 
of  the  Van  Droom-Schuylers  she  sought,  more  often 
than  not  without  finding  it,  the  spiritual  release  of  the 
great  European  cathedrals. 

It  was  almost  four  of  the  afternoon  and  the  traffic  of 
the  street  had  taken  its  customary  leisurely  drop  before 
the  next  hour's  home-going  hurry.  Neith  moved  in  a 
kind  of  muse  of  physical  content,  the  surface  of  which 
was  lightly  pricked  by  considerations  of  window  boxes 
and  the  comparative  expressiveness  of  Adam  and  Hep- 
pelwhite  furniture.  At  the  crossing  of  Tenth  she  ran  into 
Mrs.  Sherrod. 

"You  need  n't  tell  me,"  the  older  woman  laughed  by 
way  of  greeting.  "I  can  see  that  you  have  done  it." 


NO.  26  JAYNE  STREET  5 

Neith  nodded,  half  smiling.  "  How  ever  I'm  going  to 
make  the  Aunts  understand  I  don't  know.  Emmy  will 
be  all  right  after  the  first  blow.  Aunt  Emmaline  has 
given  up  trying  to  understand  things;  she  just  wonders. 
But  Great-Aunt  Doremas  will  make  a  new  will." 

"Poor  old  Becky.  She  never  will  get  over  thinking 
that  what  she  thinks  is  important."  Madelon  Sherrod 
slipped  her  hand  under  Neith's  arm  and  gently  turned 
her.  "Come  back  to  the  Brevoort  with  me  and  pour 
tea,"  she  insisted.  "Bertie  Condin  is  to  interview  me  for 
The  Era.  His  *  Modern  Players'  series,  you  know." 

Neith  yielded  to  the  kindly  compulsion,  wholly  ab 
sorbed  in  the  larger  item. 

"That  boy!  I  don't  see  why  you  consented!" 

"Oh,  The  Era  is  always  worth  while,  and  Bertie  will 
put  what  I  have  to  say  so  that  the  dear  public  will  find 
that  it  has  always  agreed  with  me." 

"He'll  put  it  so  that  it  will  appear  that  you  have 
always  agreed  with  him!" 

"My  dear,  if  you  ever  care  for  any  art  as  I  do  for  my 
acting,  you  won't  mind  who  gets  credit  for  ideas  about 
it,  so  long  as  the  public  gets  the  ideas." 

"How  can  they,  the  ideas  of  a  woman  like  you,  who 
has  experienced  and  suffered  and  accomplished  so  much, 
strained  through  the  intellect  of  a  permanently  young 
man  whose  soul  has  never  traveled  west  of  Broadway! 
It's  an  indignity!" 

Madelon  Sherrod  laughed  with  that  lovely  candor 
which  frequently  stood  between  her  and  a  public  insist- 


6  NO.  26  JAYNE  STREET 

ent  that  genius  should  seem  that  intricate  and  mysteri 
ous  thing  it  so  often  is  not.  "Bertie's  older  than  he 
looks,"  she  extenuated,  "and  he  is  really  a  very  decent 
little  man.  He  may  write  himself  into  the  interview  as 
the  fountain  head  of  my  ideas,  but  at  least  he'll  never 
make  the  mistake  of  imagining  himself  the  object  of  my 
personal  preference." 

Neith  flung  off  the  consideration  with  a  gesture  of 
young  disgust. 

"In  any  case  it  would  have  to  be  a  man,"  the  actress 
reminded  her.  "It  is  something  you  will  have  to  accept, 
Honey,  if  ever  you  undertake  to  get  yourself  appreci 
ated  in  your  native  land.  Between  you  and  your  pub 
lic  there  is  a  wall  of  men,  a  felted,  almost  sound-proof 
wall  of  male  intelligence,  male  reporters,  critics,  mana 
gers,  advertisers.  Even  if  I  knew  how  to  write,  and  I 
don't,  you  know,  there  would  still  be  men  editors,  men 
publishers,  men  reviewers.  Bertie  happens  to  be  the 
most  popular  thing  in  dramatic  critics  just  now.  He  '11 
get  me  past  the  cub  reviewers  as  I  could  n't  hope  to  do 
by  myself." 

"Just  the  same,  it's  an  indignity,"  Neith  insisted. 
She  half  turned,  eyeing  the  older  woman  for  a  moment's 
affectionate  suspicion,  "I  never  know  whether  these 
things  you  tell  me  are  true,  or  just  a  part  of  your  insidi 
ous  propaganda  for  making  a  suffragist  of  me." 

Mrs.  Sherrod  laughed,  this  time  almost  gravely. 

"Just  you  try  to  do  in  your  own  country  what  you 
did  in  England,  and  I  won't  have  to  be  insidious,"  she 


NO.  26  JAYNE  STREET  7 

cautioned.  "And  I  think  you  are  going  to  have  a  chance 
to  try,"  she  concluded  with  a  fall  to  her  flexible  voice 
that  caused  the  girl  to  look  up  quickly. 

"You  really  think  it  possible?  That  we  won't  keep  out 
of  it,  I  mean?" 

They  had  reached  the  high  stoop  of  the  Brevoort  by 
this  time,  and  stood  aside  for  a  party  arriving  just  ahead 
of  them  to  pass  up  the  narrow  stair.  Mrs.  Sherrod  delib 
erated,  searching  the  Avenue  as  though  she  expected  to 
find  her  answer  walking  there. 

"I  don't  know  anything  about  politics,"  she  said  at 
last,  "but  I  know  people  in  the  mass.  It  is  part  of  an 
actress's  business  to  smell  out  the  change  of  opinion  be 
fore  the  public  itself  is  aware  of  it,  and  every  now  and 
then  I  seem  to  get  a  whiff  of  approaching  dreadfulness." 
There  was  a  realism  in  the  lift  of  her  fine  nostril  and  turn 
of  her  beautiful  head  that  set  a  shiver  of  reminiscence 
between  Neith  Schuyler's  shoulders. 

"If  they  only  knew  how  dreadful!  You  can  smell  a 
moving  army  for  miles,  and  a  hospital  — "  She  broke 
off,  surprised  to  find  herself  tricked  into  mentioning 
what  she  had  so  carefully  avoided  since  her  return  to 
America. 

A  crowd  of  new  arrivals  swept  them  up  the  steps,  and 
a  moment  later  Mrs.  Sherrod's  "There's  Bertie!"  and 
the  formality  of  greeting  carried  them  forward  into  the 
easy  leisure  of  the  afternoon. 

Neith  was  aware  of  nods  and  smiles  and  of  waiters 
bending  to  explain  to  guests  not  habituated  to  the  place, 


8  NO.  26  JAYNE  STREET 

the  stir  of  friendly  greeting  that  accompanied  Madelon 
Sherrod  to  the  place  reserved  for  her.  Out  of  these  things 
and  the  comfortable  bourgeois  air  of  the  room,  begin 
ning  to  be  pleasantly  streaked  with  the  spring  sun,  dis 
tilled  a  poignant  recollection.  It  was  so  like  the  days 
before  the  war  when  she  and  her  father  had  drifted  hap 
pily  about  Europe;  the  comfortable  interval  in  the  day's 
distraction,  the  chatting  groups,  the  excellent  food;  her 
self  the  thrilled  and  modest  abstraction  of  young  woman 
hood  sitting  between  the  genial  notables  her  father 
loved. 

She  supposed  that  Bertie  Condin  must  be  a  notable 
of  a  sort,  or  The  Era  would  never  have  selected  him 
to  write  interviews  with  the  greatest  American  actress, 
on  "The  Promise  of  the  Drama  in  America."  At  any 
rate,  he  was  dressed  for  the  part,  his  hair  sleeked  mod- 
ishly  back  almost  beyond  the  suspicion  of  the  curl  be 
hind  the  ears,  that,  with  the  bulge  of  the  brow  and  a 
subtle  thickening  of  the  roots  of  the  nostrils,  betrayed 
a  persistent  racial  strain.  The  eyes  were  clear  and  keen, 
and  the  pallor  of  the  immature,  sophisticated  face  a 
trifle  over-emphasized  by  the  wide  black  ribbon  of  the 
eyeglasses  that  he  obviously  did  not  need. 

This  was  the  third  of  the  Sherrod  interviews,  so  that 
the  two  protagonists  slid  very  easily  into  it  the  moment 
the  ordering  of  tea  was  disposed  of.  Neith,  as  she  waited 
her  service  of  pouring,  found  time  for  recalling  whether, 
in  her  travels  with  her  father,  who  collected  distin 
guished  friendships  as  other  men  collect  snuffboxes  and 


NO.  26  JAYNE  STREET  9 

old  ivories,  she  had  ever  observed  anything  of  the  kind 
in  any  other  city  of  the  world.  Was  it  peculiar  to  Amer 
ica  that  a  woman  who  stood  for  the  best  that  America 
was  able  to  produce  in  her  own  line,  must  find  her  sole 
vehicle  for  the  expression  of  more  than  thirty  years  of 
distinguished  service  in  a  man  young  enough  to  be  her 
son?  Could  it  have  happened  anywhere  except  in  the 
United  States  that  such  a  woman  should  be  compelled 
to  draw  upon  her  precious  store  of  vitality  and  charm 
to  play  the  young  man  up  to  the  requisite  pitch?  Un 
der  penalty,  if  she  failed,  of  finding  herself,  in  her  effort 
to  give  form  and  serviceability  to  her  contribution, 
stranded  in  the  shallows  of  his  dryness. 

It  struck  her  for  the  first  time  that  the  bright  chestnut 
of  Madelon  Sherrod's  thick  coils  must  be  as  much  of  an 
art  as  her  acting.  Her  own  father's  hair  —  and  he  had 
been  about  of  an  age  with  the  woman  whose  friendship 
for  him  dated  from  the  time  they  had  been  able  to  call 
one  another  by  their  first  names  —  had  been  of  an  ador 
able  whiteness.  Recalling  Duse's  badly  done  locks,  and 
Ellen  Terry's  frank  fatness,  Neith  considered  what  she 
knew  of  Mrs.  Sherrod's  life  which  might  have  grayed  her 
temples  and  at  the  same  time  compelled  her  to  con 
cealment.  Could  this  necessity  for  keeping  herself  still 
within  the  interest  of  masculine  immaturity  be  one  of 
them?  She  was  sure  at  least  that  there  was  nothing  that 
in  Europe  would  have  been  recognized  as  a  reason  for  a 
woman  of  so  illuminated  a  personality  recording  herself 
at  second-hand. 


10  NO.  26  JAYNE  STREET 

Taking  the  note  from  her  father,  Neith  had  always 
admired  Mrs.  Sherrod  extravagantly.  Now  in  their  com 
mon  grief  at  his  loss,  the  younger  and  older  woman  had 
come  into  the  loveliest  of  relations  since  Neith's  return 
to  America,  a  nearness  which,  as  she  watched  the  young 
dramatic  critic  complacently  draping  himself  in  the  rich 
fabric  of  Mrs.  Sherrod's  art,  brought  her  a  distinct  flavor 
of  affront.  She  was  brushed  for  the  moment  by  the 
fringes  of  that  feeling  for  the  community  of  sex,  which, 
viewed  from  afar,  had  always  so  astonished  her  in  her 
countrywomen. 

At  the  same  time  that  she  felt  herself  touched  with 
resentment  on  behalf  of  other  women,  Neith  kept  glanc 
ing  about  the  sunny  room  with  its  Old- World  items  of 
furnishing,  taking  little  sips  of  the  ease  and  brightness 
of  living.  Her  mind,  recovering  from  the  fever  of  the  past 
three  years  in  France  and  England,  seized  on  trifles  with 
the  avidity  of  convalescence.  What  ravishing  little 
cakes !  How  white  the  cloths  were,  and  how  lovely  the 
stalks  of  hyacinth  and  asparagus  fern  in  the  Victorian 
vases!  Between  the  obviously  artificial  begonias  in  the 
boxes  crowning  the  half  wall  between  the  two  rooms, 
somebody  had  stuck  fresh  stems  of  pussy-willow.  How 
bourgeois  that  was,  and  how  utterly  French !  As  her  re 
suscitating  femininity  took  hold  on  these  things,  Neith's 
hand  stole  with  a  satisfying  pat  to  her  embroidered 
bag  where  reposed  the  crackly  new  lease  of  Twenty-Six 
Jayne  Street, 


NO.  26  JAYNE  STREET  11 

§2 

The  tea-things  came  at  last,  and  as  she  balanced  be 
tween  lemon  or  cream,  her  attention  came  back  to  Mrs. 
Sherrod  and  the  childlike  joy  of  the  artist  in  her  art, 
talking  with  a  freedom  and  vitality  that  washed  the 
complacency  out  of  Bertie  Condin's  face  as  the  rain 
takes  the  red  from  the  raddled  cheeks  of  a  shopgirl. 
Neith's  sympathy  came  back  with  that  sweet  readiness 
which  women  pluck  somehow  from  long  attendance  on 
a  beloved  invalid.  She  decided  that  Bertie  was,  after  all, 
rather  nice,  and  if  Madelon  had  to  be  written  up  by  a 
young  man,  it  was  a  mercy  she  had  got  somebody  she 
could  like.  So  between  sympathy  and  simple  sensuous 
content,  the  afternoon  burnt  itself  away  like  a  purring 
flame.  It  reached  its  golden  tip  at  a  quarter  to  five  when 
the  rising  of  a  party  at  the  table  next  to  them  disclosed 
Adam  Frear  and  two  other  men,  about  to  sit  down  at  the 
first  table  beyond  the  half  wall. 

Frear  rose  instantly  on  catching  sight  of  her,  and 
came  all  the  way  around  to  their  table  to  shake  hands, 
bringing  Mrs.  Sherrod  back  from  the  peak  of  art  to  the 
normal  uses  of  society. 

"You!"  she  cried.  "I  thought  you  were  watching  the 
wheels  go  round  at  Washington." 

"Until  to-day,"  Frear  assured  her.  "We  all  came  up 
together."  He  moved  aside  as  he  spoke  to  show  them  the 
other  members  of  his  party. 

With  quick  friendliness  the  actress  pushed  away  the 


12  NO.  26  JAYNE  STREET 

cold  tea-things  and  with  the  same  gesture  beckoned  a 
waiter.  "That's  Van  Harwood,  is  n't  it?"  Her  fine  eyes 
took  in  the  blond  young  war  correspondent  staring 
across  at  them  in  the  shy  hope  of  recognition.  "Bring 
him  over,  all  of  you.  Bertie's  had  enough  for  one  session. 
Besides,  he  is  coming  to  dinner  with  me  Tuesday."  This 
was  the  first  that  Bertie  had  heard  of  it,  but  he  was  too 
much  flattered  by  this  public  inclusion  in  her  plans  to  do 
anything  but  accept. 

He  put  up  his  notes  and  made  a  place  for  Harwood 
and  the  third  guest,  who  was  introduced  to  Miss  Schuy- 
ler  as  the  editor  of  a  radical  weekly  which  maintained 
its  place  in  the  procession  of  the  hour  by  a  certain 
small-boy  facility  for  making  faces  at  the  policeman. 

Harwood's  glance,  as  he  acknowledged  his  own  intro 
duction,  stayed  for  a  puzzled  moment  on  the  younger 
woman's  face,  before  it  moved  on  discreetly,  catching 
her  plea  for  silence  on  the  wing.  He  recalled  her  now 
in  attendance  on  her  invalid  father  as  they  were  all 
hemmed  in,  unbelievably,  in  Belgium  by  the  first  Ger 
man  advance. 

His  natural  inquiry  for  her  invalid's  welfare,  dropped 
before  the  prompting  of  three  years  of  war  experience, 
that  there  are  many  occasions  when  it  is  better  to  let 
sleeping  horrors  lie. 

He  had  time  for  a  brief  moment  of  wonder  whether 
this  characteristic  American  inability  to  meet  the  dread- 
fulness  of  war  had  n't  something  to  do  with  our  failure 
to  deal  with  it,  before  Mrs.  Sherrod  distracted  him  to 


NO.  26  JAYNE  STREET  13 

the  consideration  of  one  lump  or  two.  Neith  looked  up, 
relieved  to  find  Frear's  kind  eyes  and  smile  still  fixed  on 
her,  and  to  be  glad  that  she  had  put  on  her  most  fetching 
hat. 

Miss  Schuyler  specialized  on  hats.  She  liked,  she  al 
ways  said,  to  have  people  look  at  her  when  they  talked, 
and  it  was  only  fair  that  they  should  have  something 
worth  looking  at.  For  the  rest  of  her  dress  she  had  ac 
quired  a  simplicity  suited  to  the  emergencies  of  her 
father's  ill-health  and  their  perpetual  flight  from  resort 
to  resort.  But  her  hats  were  always  marvels  of  feminine 
intricacy,  dash  of  line,  and  swift  surprises  of  color. 

People  were  intrigued  by  them  into  imagining  that 
theirs  was  the  awaited  touch  which  was  to  bring  the 
same  color  and  piquancy  to  the  face  beneath  them.  It 
was  "the  thing"  among  Neith  Schuyler's  friends  to  be 
have  as  if  the  trick  of  making  Neith  beautiful  was  just 
about  to  be  turned.  Hers  was  precisely  the  sort  of  face 
that  invited  the  attempt;  oval  and  slightly  irregular, 
pale,  with  long-lashed,  rather  absent-looking  eyes, 
framed  in  masses  of  pale  brown,  gold-dusted  hair.  An 
accented  curve,  a  brighter  flush,  a  glint  of  fire  —  men 
had  tried  for  these  with  love-making,  and  women  had 
tried  introducing  her  to  their  favorite  dressmaker. 
Neith  was  very  sweet  about  it,  but  secretly  rather  hurt. 
She  thought  if  her  friends  found  her  lacking  to  that  ex 
tent,  it  would  have  been  kinder  to  say  no  more  about  it. 

Now,  as  she  looked  up  at  Adam  Frear,  she  was  pleased 
not  to  note  in  his  glance  any  intention  of  affecting  those 


14  NO.  26  JAYNE  STREET 

extensive  alterations  in  her  appearance  with  which  so 
many  men  initiated  an  acquaintance.  She  knew  the 
opening  moves  so  well !  At  twenty-six  Neith  had  grown 
to  be  a  trifle  resentful  of  the  nearly  universal  desire  of 
men  to  establish  relations  with  her  on  the  basis  of  what 
they  might  make  of  her.  Frear's  quiet  air  of  being  pleased 
with  her  as  she  was,  came  to  her  like  a  warm  waft  out  of 
a  country  for  which,  ever  since  her  return,  she  had  been 
grievously  homesick.  Subtilties  of  home-coming,  which, 
until  now,  she  had  expected  from  her  native  land  with 
out  finding  them,  pervaded  her  attention.  So  that  she 
missed  finding  out  that  Frear  had  deliberately  remained 
standing  in  order  that,  in  the  general  rearrangement 
of  the  party  which  had  been  widened  to  include  Miss 
Fleeta  Spence,  he  might  finally  secure  the  place  beside 
herself. 

Miss  Spence  had  been  swept  up  by  Harwood  as  she 
came  in  alone,  and  good-humoredly  welcomed  by  the 
rest  of  the  company,  to  whom  she  seemed  to  be  the 
source  of  amused  and  affectionate  raillery.  Miss  Spence 
wore  bobbed  hair  and  sandals,  and  a  dress  that  ran 
mostly  to  "lines"  as  these  were  understood  in  the  neigh 
borhood  of  the  Square.  Her  particular  "line"  was  social 
reconstruction.  It  did  not  greatly  matter  to  Fleeta  what 
was  being  reconstructed  or  who  set  about  it;  the  mere 
suggestion  that  somebody  was  undertaking  to  put  right 
anything,  which,  since  it  was  a  part  of  the  present  sys 
tem,  must  be  necessarily  wrong,  was  enough  to  bring 
Fleeta  roundly  to  the  colors. 


NO.  26  JAYNE  STREET  15 

Harwood,  who  had  gone  to  school  with  her  somewhere 
in  that  vague  and  generally  reprobated  region  known 
as  the  Middle  West,  had  not  hesitated  to  include  her  in 
Mrs.  Sherrod's  invitation.  Fleeta's  admiration  for  the 
great  actress  was  one  of  the  endearing  traits  that  burned 
like  a  steady  candle  undisturbed  by  the  frequent  gusts 
of  her  enthusiasms.  Neith  observed  that  the  war  corre 
spondent  was  entertaining  himself  greatly  at  Fleeta's 
expense.  What  she  did  not  know  was  that  he  used  her  as 
a  vane  to  the  ever-veering  winds  of  radicalism,  to  which, 
as  a  successful  journalist  of  current  opinion,  he  was  con 
stantly  alert.  It  was  commonly  reported  that  the  Presi 
dent  himself  had  recourses  to  Harwood's  prophetic  fac 
ulty,  to  which  Fleeta's  whirling  social  sympathy  was  a 
straw.  It  was  with  an  eye  to  her  possible  reaction  that 
he  answered  Mrs.  Sherrod  the  moment  the  business  of 
re-ordering  had  been  disposed  of. 

"Have  you  come,"  the  actress  asked  him  with  an 
appearance  of  lightness,  "to  break  up  my  dream  of  a 
theater  again?"  They  all  knew  well  enough  why  the 
most  competent  actress  in  America  was  without  a  the 
ater  of  her  own,  and  how  the  expectation  of  having  one 
built  for  her  had  been  dashed  three  years  before,  when 
Van  Harwood  came  back  from  Belgium  with  very  posi 
tive  conclusions  about  the  probable  duration  of  the  war. 
She  had  come  back  to  what  was  a  practical  certainty 
of  fulfillment  during  the  past  winter,  and  the  full  import 
of  the  light-seeming  query  was  lost  on  no  one  around  the 
table. 


16  NO.  26  JAYNE  STREET 

"We'll  build  it  for  you,"  he  returned  as  lightly,  "out 
of  our  war  indemnities." 

"You  think  we  are  really  going  in,  then?" 

"I'll  give  us  six  weeks.  I  saw  the  President  yesterday 
and  I  think  he  has  his  mind  made  up." 

"But,  Van!  How  can  he—"  This  was  Fleeta,  rally 
ing  to  the  defense  of  her  line  of  the  moment,  which 
was  international  abolition  of  militarism.  Instantly  the 
talk  around  the  well-furnished  table  was  away  on  the 
track  of  the  imminent  declaration  which  was  in  every 
body's  mouth,  but  Neith  felt  certain,  with  the  exception 
of  the  war  correspondent's,  not  in  anybody's  conscious 
ness.  Frear,  who  talked  very  little,  had  the  air  of  think 
ing  that  all  the  improbable  and  contradictory  things 
that  Fleeta,  Harwood,  and  the  editor  of  The  Proletariat 
said,  might  happen. 

"Workers  will  never  fight  workers!"  Fleeta  insisted. 

"Well,  they  are!"  Harwood  reminded  her. 

"They'll  fight"  —  the  editor  spoke  for  his  constitu 
ents  —  "but  they'll  fight  the  Capitalists  who  made  the 
war.  It  means  revolution.  Have  you  seen  our  last  car 
toon?" 

This  last  was  not  so  much  a  question  as  a  reminder 
that  there,  in  the  pages  of  The  Proletariat,  was  to  be 
found  the  true  Delphic  article. 

Harwood  nodded.  "Also  I  expect  to  see  you  jailed  for 
it." 

Fleeta  mingled  affirmations  as  to  the  impregnability 
of  Free  Speech  with  her  diatribes  against  militarism. 


NO.  26  JAYNE  STREET  17 

To  Neith  none  of  the  talk,  except  Harwood's,  rang 
seriously  informed  or  true,  and  Frear's  detachment 
troubled  her.  She  had  been  nourished  in  an  idealization 
of  America  as  something  lovely  and  young,  with  the 
crudities  of  youth,  but  of  irreproachable  promise. 

She  had  felt,  in  the  first  shrinking  from  the  unreason 
ing  horror  of  war  as  it  burst  upon  them  at  Aix-les-Bains, 
a  sort  of  moral  superiority  in  her  country's  exemption, 
which  the  ensuing  years  in  France  had  taught  her  to 
recognize  as  snobbish  and  provincial. 

She  had  endured  there  something  of  what  the  French 
themselves  suffered;  hurt  of  disappointed  admiration 
for  the  strong  young  Nation  whose  only  response  to  her 
extremity  had  been  a  handful  of  loose  coin  and  a  fulsome 
amount  of  lip  sympathy.  Later,  in  England,  where  she 
had  heard  it  called  "blood  money,"  she  had  suffered  a 
fierce  accession  of  loyalty  to  the  country  which  she  had 
not  seen  for  five  years.  If  America  was  making  money 
while  England  bled,  she  insisted,  what  else  had  England 
been  doing  while  this  basilisk  hatched  under  her  garden 
wall?  It  was  in  a  sudden  deep  impatience  with  both  Eng 
land  and  France  for  letting  loose,  by  their  blindness,  this 
monster  on  the  world,  that  she  had  abandoned  the  relief 
work  in  which  she  had  tried  to  sink  the  immensity  of  loss 
after  her  father's  death,  and  had  returned  to  the  family 
home,  facing  with  unabated  sense  of  merit  the  encroach 
ments  of  Little  Italy  across  Washington  Square.  And  it 
was  to  an  America  stranger  than  Europe  that  she  had 
come  back. 


18  NO.  26  JAYNE  STREET 

Now,  as  the  eddy  of  opposing  views  swept  about  the 
table,  with  its  revealing  lack  of  world  knowledge,  its 
formless  consciousness  of  class,  and  its  welter  of  personal 
predilections,  Neith  found  herself  turning  to  Adam 
Frear  with  an  extraordinary  sense  of  need.  It  had  been 
but  a  matter  of  a  week  or  two  since  she  had  renewed  an 
acquaintance  begun  and  broken  off  five  years  before. 
Partly  on  account  of  what  he  had  been  to  her  father  on 
that  occasion,  and  partly  for  the  attribution  of  "political 
astuteness  which  had  kept  him,  all  that  time,  a  bright, 
outstanding  peak  in  the  American  scene,  her  confidence 
ran  toward  him  now  like  a  spider  on  its  slender  thread. 
She  had  an  odd  impulse  to  tuck  her  hand  under  his  arm 
as  she  used  to  do  with  her  father  when,  in  foreign  circles, 
the  talk  left  them  feeling  a  little  too  much  on  the  out 
side,  too  much  the  American.  In  the  instant  of  recogniz 
ing  the  impulse  she  blushed,  for'  Frear,  without  look  or 
sound,  became  immediately  aware  of  her  need  of  inclu 
sion,  and  drew  the  talk  back  to  the  commonplace  with  a 
good-humored  thrust  at  Fleeta. 

"You'll  let  yourself  in  for  a  brand-new  experience  if 
you  keep  on  talking  for  Germany  like  that.  Somebody 
will  accuse  you  of  being  afraid  to  lose  your  job." 

Fleeta  taught  German  in  one  of  the  high  schools  in  the 
intervals  when  she  was  not  engaged  in  stage-setting  the 
social  revolution;  but  Fleeta  was  immensely  superior  to 
the  personal  consideration. 

"It  amounts  to  that  already,"  she  declared.  "You've 
no  idea  how  the  classes  have  fallen  off.  First  thing  I 


NO.  26  JAYNE  STREET  19 

know  I  can't  even  afford  to  live  in  Jayne  Street."  Fleeta 
was  comfortably  established  in  a  reconstructed  resi 
dence,  where  the  street  turns  out  of  Seventh. 

"You  should  worry!"  Harwood  teased.  "You'll  be 
living  in  Jane  Street  all  your  life,  Fleeta." 

"I  hope  at  any  rate  for  this  year,"  Neith  smiled 
pleasantly  across.  "I  have  just  taken  a  lease  there  my 
self." 

"You  don't  look  it,"  Harwood  assured  her. 

Mrs.  Sherrod  came  to  the  relief  of  Neith's  sudden 
mystification.  "Just  one  of  Van's  silly  jokes,"  she  ex 
plained.  "He  spells  it  J-a-n-e.  It's  a  way  of  saying  that 
you  have  become  a  confirmed  feminist." 

"Oh,  well,"  Neith  smiled  back  pointedly,  "I'll  be  in 
good  company.  That's  why  I'm  going  there  to  live," 
she  added  for  the  benefit  of  the  others.  "So  I  can  have 
the  company  I  h'ke  without  disturbing  my  Aunts.  You 
must  all  come  and  see  me  as  soon  as  I  am  settled."  She 
blushed  with  a  becoming  accession  of  consciousness  at 
finding  herself  the  object  of  their  friendly  attention. 
"It's  not  that  the  Aunts  are  n't  perfectly  lovely,  but 
they  are  Great- Aunts,  really,  and  the  gap  is  too  wide  for 
me  to  cover." 

Harwood  felt  it  time  to  define  his  status  as  a  former 
acquaintance.  He  was  sure  he  was  going  to  be  a  fre 
quent  caller  at  Twenty-Six. 

"I  take  it,  then,  that  I  shan't  be  seeing  you  again 
Over  There." 

"I  shan't  dare  to  go  back,"  Neith  told  him,  "until 


20  NO.  26  JAYNE  STREET 

I  know  how  to  reply  to  some  of  the  things  they  are  say 
ing  about  us  there.  I  really  came  back  to  discover  Amer 
ica.  Now  that  I  am  here  I  am  bothered  which  to  believe 
of  the  things  we  say  about  ourselves.  I  find  them  ex 
traordinarily  contradictory." 

"That,"  said  the  editor  of  The  Proletariat,  "is  because 
the  voice  of  America  is  an  orchestra  with  the  bass  parts 
all  left  out.  It  is  labor  that  beats  time  to  the  march  of 
events,  and  until  labor  can  have  a  free,  unprejudiced 
hearing  in  America,  all  you  can  puzzle  out  of  the  rest 
won't  lead  you  anywhere." 

"Does  n't  it?"  Neith  was  on  the  point  of  asking  how 
that  could  be  with  at  least  one  newspaper  of  their  own 
and  a  weekly  like  The  Proletariat.  She  found  herself,  in 
stead,  taking  in  the  fine,  workless  hands  of  the  editor, 
the  full  forehead,  the  well-cut,  mobile  mouth,  too  full, 
the  whole  appearance  of  the  man  and  especially  the 
mouth  giving  the  impression  of  an  instrument  too  com 
plex  for  any  music  that  had  yet  been  played  on  it.  She 
contented  herself  with  saying  quite  simply:  "It's  what 
I  should  like  above  all  things,  finding  out  what  the 
masses  of  the  Americans  really  think.  It's  one  of  my 
reasons  for  wanting  to  live  by  myself.  My  people  —  the 
Aunts,  you  know  —  speak  in  terms  of  —  of  Capitalism." 
She  hesitated  over  the  unfamiliar  patter,  looking  shyly 
to  Frear  for  support. 

"You  are  getting  on  rapidly,"  he  encouraged,  "if  you 
have  already  realized  that." 

Mrs.  Sherrod  leaned  across  the  table.  "I've  been 


NO.  26  JAYNE  STREET  21 

wanting  to  ask,"  she  said  rather  directly  to  Frear, 
"what  does  Rose  think  about  it  —  our  going  into  the 
war,  I  mean?  " 

In  the  little  tribute  of  silence  which  was  paid  to  Mrs. 
Sherrod  as  the  more  important  speaker,  Neith  was  in 
stantly  aware  that  this,  for  some  reason  which  Mrs. 
Sherrod  had  not  divined,  was  the  wrong  question  to 
have  asked.  She  had  no  idea  who  Rose  might  be,  that 
Adam  Frear's  knowledge  of  her  should  be  so  easily  as 
sumed,  but  she  was  sure,  from  the  slight  detachment 
of  his  answer,  and  the  hand  at  his  mustache,  that  it 
had  annoyed  him.  But  he  answered  without  too  much 
hesitation.  "I  don't  know,  really.  I  haven't  seen  her 
lately." 

The  next  moment  Mrs.  Sherrod  rose  with  a  hasty 
recollection  of  her  dressing  hour,  and  carried  Neith  off 
with  her  with  a  swift  unceremoniousness  that  com 
pletely  severed  her  from  the  rest  of  the  party,  who,  after 
the  confusion  of  half  rising,  settled  back  for  another  turn 
of  talk.  Neith  hesitated  at  the  curb  from  which  the  ac 
tress  had  taken  flight  in  a  deftly  snatched  taxi,  hoping 
some  of  the  others  would  come  out,  and  finally  surren 
dered  herself  to  the  charm  of  the  home-going  crowd  and 
the  twilight  hour. 

There  was  a  smell  of  sap  from  the  budding  trees  that 
line  this  part  of  the  Avenue,  and  a  little  sailing  sliver  of 
new  moon.  Thin  silvery  slivers  of  children's  laughter 
floated  up  from  the  open  Square  to  join  it.  Far  up  the 
Avenue,  like  the  strings  of  a  harp,  rows  of  street  lamps 


22  NO.  26  JAYNE  STREET 

vibrated  into  light.  At  the  corner  of  Washington  Mews 
Neith  lost  the  delicate  fretwork  of  boughs  against  the 
illuminated  dusk  of  the  sky,  as  she  bumped  into  the 
billowy  figure  of  Aunt  Emmaline. 

II 


IF  Neith  had  had  any  doubt  about  where  Aunt  Emmy 
could  have  been  going  in  that  state  of  fluttered  feminine 
consciousness,  it  would  have  been  resolved  by  the  sud 
den  yielding  to  relief  and  the  mysterious  caution  with 
which  the  elder  woman  convinced  herself  that  they  were 
unobserved.  The  look  of  the  defrauded  child,  which  was 
the  most  pitiful  thing  Neith  had  to  bear  in  connection 
with  Aunt  Emmy,  gave  place  to  a  simpering  discretion, 
and  the  thrust  of  a  thick,  soft  arm  through  hers. 

"Of  course,"  said  the  fluttered  lady,  "I  expected 
to  meet  you,  otherwise  I  should  have  waited  for 
Becky." 

Knowing  very  well  that  her  aunt  could  n't  have  had 
the  least  notion  of  her  whereabouts,  Neith  yielded  to  the 
pressure  that  turned  her  back  up  the  Avenue.  She  did 
her  best  to  give  an  air  of  casual  survey  to  the  darting 
looks  Aunt  Emmaline  cast  up  and  down  the  cross- 
streets,  from  any  one  of  which  Great-Aunt  Doremas 
might  surprise  them.  If  that  happened,  Aunt  Emmy 
would  be  instantly  relegated  to  a  mere  incident  in  the 
occasion  which  had  called  her  forth,  might  even  be  re- 


NO.  26  JAYNE  STREET  23 

duced  to  a  state  of  nerves  which  could  serve  as  an  excuse 
for  sending  her  home  with  her  errand  unaccomplished. 

Since  almost  the  only  personal  enterprise  Neith  had 
known  for  the  past  four  or  five  months  had  been  to  see 
that  Aunt  Emmaline  should  n't  be  made  unnecessarily 
unhappy,  she  assumed,  against  the  unexpected  appear 
ance  of  Aunt  Doremas,  the  air  of  directing  the  affair  in 
her  own  interest. 

"I  hope  the  General  is  n't  ill?"  she  managed  to  ask 
with  a  surprising  naturalness,  as  they  turned  into  East 
Eleventh. 

"Oh,  no!  It's  about  the  mills."  Aunt  Emmaline  was 
flutteringly  impressive.  "Otherwise  I  should  have 
waited  for  Becky."  She  was  firm  on  that  point.  "But 
the  dear  General  retires  so  early.  It  did  n't  seem  kind  to 
keep  him  waiting." 

Neith  herself  was  nothing  if  not  kind.  "Of  course  if  he 
needed  you  — " 

Aunt  Emmy  was  at  ease  again.  "If  things  are  as  he 
says,  something  ought  to  be  done  about  it  right  away." 

"The  dear  General  always  thinks  something  can  be 
done  right  away."  Neith  instinctively  adopted  a  tone  of 
light  banter  as  the  best  way  to  meet  what  inevitably 
happened  after  one  of  Aunt  Emmy's  business  interviews 
with  the  General.  Neith  did  not  even  think  him  a  dear, 
but  it  was  as  our  dear  General  that  the  Van  Droom- 
Schuyler-Doremases  always  referred  to  him. 

"The  military  temperament!"  Aunt  Emmy  sighed. 
"One  never  knows,"  she  continued,  "how  to  refuse  these 


24  NO.  26  JAYNE  STREET 

masterful  men!"  It  had  been  fifty-odd  years  since 
Eustace  Rittenhouse  had  been  mustered  out  of  the 
Army  of  the  Potomac,  but  Aunt  Emmy  suffered  from 
time  to  time  the  happy  agitation  of  discovery.  As  they 
stood  for  a  moment  after  ringing,  where  the  light  from 
the  old-fashioned,  hooded  stoop  threw  into  fullest  relief 
the  foolish  tremors  of  the  fat,  faded  face,  it  swept 
freshly  across  her  niece's  mind  that  Emmy's  time  for 
loving  must  have  come  just  when  the  country  had  paid 
out  the  pick  of  her  young  men  as  the  price  of  Emanci 
pation. 

She  thought  swiftly  of  all  the  women  of  France  and 
England  whose  love  life  must  stand  forever  arrested 
around  the  figure  of  young  soldiers.  If  what  Harwood 
and  the  others  had  been  saying  that  afternoon  proved 
true,  it  was  a  thing  that  might  happen  to  Neith  herself. 
She  had  not  been  given  to  thinking  much  of  men  in 
the  personal  relation,  but  Aunt  Emmaline  had  a  way 
of  making  spinsterhood  —  horrible !  A  kind  of  maimed 
unnaturalness  against  which  Neith's  whole  nature  sud 
denly  took  flight. 

Being  dragged  into  this  silly  savor  of  sex  adventure, 
which  Aunt  Emmy  persisted  in  reading  into  a  simple 
visit  to  an  old  man  who  was  also  an  old  family  friend, 
affected  her  spiritually.  She  felt  her  powers  ebb  in  the 
passage  from  the  cool,  spring  starlight  into  the  stale 
and  mothy  shadows  of  the  second-floor  front,  which  was 
all  Eustace  Rittenhouse  had  been  able  to  retain  for  his 
own  use  of  what  had  once  been  the  Rittenhouse  mansion. 


NO.  26  JAYNE  STREET  25 

Aunt  Emmaline  suffered  an  accession  of  girlishness  on 
the  landing.  "You  go  first,"  she  simpered,  and  Neith 
hastened  to  throw  the  General  and  his  room  like  an 
old  shawl  over  the  tatters  of  Aunt  Emmaline's  maiden 
hood. 

They  had  both  been  handsome  together,  Eustace  and 
his  room,  and  the  first  impression  one  received  was  that 
in  the  shake-down  the  room  had  rather  the  advantage. 
It  still  had  high,  delicate  cornices  and  a  carved  mantel  of 
white  marble,  holding  aloof  from  the  senile  squalor  that 
prevailed  over  all  the  furnishings.  It  succeeded  far  better 
than  the  General  did  in  impressing  the  visitor  with  its 
quality.  It  made  an  appropriate  background  for  the 
badly  remembered  ritual  of  gallantry  which  the  General 
paid  to  the  tradition  of  Aunt  Emmaline's  youth  and 
singleness.  But  at  least  it  did  not  lend  itself  to  his  anx 
iety  to  lay  hands  on  some  portion  of  Miss  Schuyler's 
patrimony  to  feed  the  doubtful  investments  which  were 
his  sole  claim  to  participation  in  the  generation  to  which 
he  had  survived.  It  maintained,  with  its  stately  propor 
tions  and  chaste  ornament,  a  sort  of  high-bred  detach 
ment  from  the  General's  senile  enjoyment  of  his  sole  re 
maining  masculine  function,  that  of  advising  his  female 
friends  about  the  management  of  their  property.  It  had 
the  air,  indeed,  of  offering  its  somewhat  ratty  and  neg 
lected  collection  of  military  miscellanies  as  an  alterna 
tive  to  the  intermittently  acted  farce  of  masculine  con 
cern  and  fluttered  feminine  acquiescence  that  went  on 
in  it. 


26  NO.  26  JAYNE  STREET 

"So  kind  of  you,  my  dear  Eustace,  to  take  an  inter 
est..." 

"A  matter  on  which  you  may  absolutely  rely  on  my 
judgment,  Emmaline,  absolutely  ..." 

"If  you  would  only  put  it  to  Becky  yourself.  I  assure 
you  I  have  n't  the  least  influence  ..." 

Neith  knew  that  the  Aunts'  property  was  so  snugly 
tied  up  that  almost  their  sole  prerogative,  besides  spend 
ing  the  income,  was  the  making  of  frequent  wills  about 
it.  And  the  General's  financial  capacity  was  chiefly  evi 
denced  by  his  having  sunk  his  own  and  most  of  his  wife's 
fortune  without  a  trace.  But  ever  so  often  the  General 
warned  and  advised  and  the  ladies  fluttered,  advanced, 
and  finally  denied.  As  though  the  whole  performance 
were  a  dance  of  which  they  remembered  the  figures,  but 
had  forgotten  the  tune,  and  yet  they  must  be  up  and  at 
it  whenever  the  turn  was  called. 

•  ",         3  '        §4  '. 

With  deliberate  detachment  Neith  withdrew  her  at^ 
tention  from  the  occupants  of  the  room  and  began  to 
compare  the  worn  knapsacks  and  the  swords  sealed  into 
their  scabbards  with  rust,  with  what  she  knew  of  mod 
ern  equipment.  All  at  once  they  leaped  out  at  her,  in 
vested  with  human  interest.  Figments  of  personal  his 
tory,  such  as  the  General  had  told  her  as  a  child,  draped 
them  like  old  cobwebs,  dark  with  dust.  She  thought  of 
trophies  more  recently  seen  over  the  hearths  of  France 
and  England.  Once  more  she  found  herself  penetrated 


NO.  26  JAYNE  STREET  27 

with  the  desire  to  know  and  understand,  which  for  the 
last  year  or  two  had  eaten  like  a  fever  into  the  very 
joints  of  her  being.  What  was  the  matter  with  the  world 
when  the  figure  of  History  took  shape  as  senility,  meas 
uring  its  days  from  the  high-water  mark  of  death  and 
destruction? 

Neith  had  been  brought  up  in  the  tradition  that  all 
these  faded  tintypes,  framed  commissions,  and  bundles 
of  old  letters  tied  with  varicolored  string  were  of  im 
mense  but  unspecified  value.  Now  she  saw  them  cheap 
ened  by  the  use  to  which  they  were  being  put,  of  illus 
trating  the  General's  own  History  of  the  Great  War  from 
Day  to  Day.  As  if  that  tremendous  drama  of  civil  strife 
were  reduced  impudently  to  being  viewed  by  the  light 
of  the  single  reading-lamp  dropping  its  sixteen-candle 
power  from  the  vast  ornate  chandelier  of  other  days. 

Would  all  the  heroism,  the  sacrifice,  the  vision  of  the 
past  three  years  in  Europe  come  to  this;  or  was  there 
something  more  in  the  Democracy  which  professed  to  be 
born  of  such  travail?  Whatever  it  was,  she  must  find 
and  feel  the  pivot  of  the  time  in  which  she  lived,  even  if 
she  impaled  herself  upon  it. 

The  resurgence  of  this  sharp  personal  hunger  de 
tached  her  attention  from  the  very  objects  that  had 
called  it  up.  Across  the  room  there  was  a  querulous  note 
in  the  voice  that  held  Aunt  Emmaline  in  the  thrall  of 
military  masterfulness. 

"Of  course  Becky  will  understand  that  this  is  an 
opportunity  that  I  would  be  glad  to  take  up  myself,  an 


28  NO.  26  JAYNE  STREET 

opportunity  that  I  —  ah  —  a  Rittenhouse  could  not 
afford  to  neglect,  if  I  were  not  so  —  so  unfortunately 
placed.  If  my  property  were  not  tied  up  with  the  inter 
ests  of  —  others  —  ah  —  that  Becky  will  understand 
my  reasons  for  leaving  umnentioned." 

"Aunt  Emmy,"  Neith  called  sharply,  "I  am  afraid  if 
we  don't  hurry — " 

I  I  .    |5  '      : 

"One  never  realizes  the  flight  of  time  when  Eustace  is 
talking,"  Aunt  Emmy  apologized,  trotting  heavily  apace 
with  her  niece's  light  step.  "So  interesting,  and  impor 
tant,  too,  when  you  think  of  everything  that  might  hap 
pen.  It  seems  he  has  heard  of  a  wonderful  new  process 
of  making  potash  from  sea  water.  Quite  indispensable, 
you  know,  in  making  ammunition.  Potash,  I  mean. 
They  get  it  from  seaweed,  and  a  friend  of  the  General's 
has  a  friend  who  has  invented  a  method  of  taking  it  out 
of  the  sea  water  direct.  Such  a  simplification." 

"He  wants  you  and  Aunt  Rebecka  to  put  your  money 
into  it,  I  suppose." 

"He  would  much  prefer  financing  the  thing  himself. 
Eustace  is  so  patriotic !  But  the  way  he  is  placed  —  so 
unfortunate.  Frances,  you  know — " 

Neith  did  know.  It  was  the  neglected  item  which 
made  this  harmless  visit  to  his  rooms  by  a  maiden  lady 
an  affair  of  discretion  edging  always  toward  the  in 
discreet.  The  General  was  a  married  man.  Somewhere 
in  an  uptown  apartment  he  had  a  wife  whom  he  had 


NO.  26  JAYNE  STREET  29 

stripped  of  everything  but  the  traditions  of  her  gener 
ation,  which  made  her  refuse  to  divorce  him  on  the 
grounds  the  General  himself  had  amply  provided.  It  was 
five  or  six  years  since  Neith  had  met  this  unfortunate 
lady,  but  every  introduction  of  her  into  the  conversation 
touched  her  own  attitude  with  asperity. 

"If  I  were  you,"  she  warned,  "I'd  let  the  General  tell 
Aunt  Rebecka  about  it  himself." 

"But  about  the  strike.  At  the  mills,  you  know.  She'll 
see  that  in  the  paper  to-night.  That's  why  he  wanted  her 
to  know  at  once  — " 

"A  strike  at  Marcy?"  Neith  recalled  that  Adam 
Frear  had  said  that  very  afternoon  that  he  might  be 
going  down  to  Marcy  any  moment  and  the  others  had 
seemed  to  understand.  He  had  n't  known,  of  course, 
that  the  principal  mills  at  Marcy  were  chiefly  owned  by 
the  Van  Droom-Schuylers.  "Aunt  Emmy,"  she  sud 
denly  demanded,  "I  never  asked,  but  is  any  of  my 
father's  money  invested  in  the  mills?" 

"Oh,  no.  Uncle  Van  did  n't  leave  him  any  shares,  you 
know.  Your  father  was  young  then,  and  he  had  —  sort  of 
notions.  Uncle  Van  was  much  vexed.  Your  father  always 
said  that  he  did  n't  like  investments  that  were  tied  up 
with  Classes.  Quite  right,  too,  I  think  he  was  —  all  this 
Socialism  sort  of  thing  that  is  going  about.  That's  why 
the  General  — "  She  twittered  on  with  a  theory  of  in 
vestments  contemporaneous  with  side  whiskers.  They 
began,  like  the  whiskers  that  were  once  the  General's 
glory,  in  the  personal  issue  and  undulated  gracefully  in 


30  NO.  26  JAYNE  STREET 

all  directions,  not  without  a  suspicion  of  the  mousiness 
that  characterized  the  state  of  the  General's  whiskers 
to-day.  Neith  heard  nothing.  She  was  caught  up  with  a 
thrill  into  the  certainty  that  now1  she  should  find  out 
what  a  strike  really  meant. 

She  knew  it  was  something  about  which  the  English 
people  among  whom  she  had  been  socially  cast,  with 
every  appearance  of  being  considerately  calm,  had  been 
inwardly  cowed.  It  was  a  thing  that  was  constantly  oc 
curring  between  Labor  and  Capital  with  a  great  deal  of 
inconvenience  to  the  bystanders,  but  without,  so  far  as 
she  herself  had  been  concerned,  accomplishing  anything. 
It  appeared  to  occur  as  causelessly  as  a  drought  or  an 
earthquake,  but  without  any  of  the  traditional  assurance 
of  its  not  occurring  again  in  the  same  place.  And  yet  in 
her  recent  attempt  to  sum  up  the  meaning  of  the  present 
hour,  not  being  able  to  calculate  on  the  source  and  direc 
tion  of  strikes  was  like  doing  arithmetic  and  leaving  out 
all  the  nines. 

Neith  attempted  to  extract  some  particulars  of  the 
strike  at  Marcy  from  Aunt  Emmaline,  but  Emmaline's 
information  went  only  as  far  as  the  General  had  thought 
it  necessary  to  go  to  intimidate  her  about  the  status  of 
the  family  investment.  It  was  a  habit  of  the  General's 
to  deprecate  any  investments  not  undertaken  by  his 
advice.  Neith  reflected  that  she  might  be  able  to  learn 
something  from  Adam  Frear.  She  did  not  know  what  his 
function  in  regard  to  strikes  might  be,  but  that  also 
might  be  an  item  of  the  day's  news. 


NO.  26  JAYNE  STREET  31 

Great- Aunt  Rebecka  Doremas  was  moving  heavily 
about  in  the  back  parlor  when  Horlick  opened  the  door 
to  them.  Neith,  to  whom  it  was  instinctive  to  attack  in 
open  order,  walked  directly  toward  her. 

"Oh,  I  did  n't  know  we  were  having  company!"  was 
her  opening  move.  It  was  the  custom  for  the  family 
when  alone  to  sit  in  the  small  room  at  the  head  of  the 
stairs;  but  Mrs.  Doremas  was  plainly  making  those  un 
necessary  and  wholly  feminine  passes  among  the  furni 
ture  known  as  tidying  up. 

"I  must  run  right  up  and  dress,"  Neith  concluded. 
Nevertheless  she  lingered  until  she  heard  the  nearly 
inaudible  click  of  Aunt  Emmaline's  door  upstairs.  If 
there  was  to  be  company  it  was  more  than  ever  impor 
tant  that  there  should  n't  be  one  of  those  scenes  that 
occurred  between  the  sisters  after  every  attempt  of  poor 
Emmy's  to  take  the  initiative.  By  sheer  force  of  will 
Neith  kept  Aunt  Rebecka's  attention  on  the  plumping 
of  undented  pillows  and  the  redisposing  of  them  in 
utterly  inappropriate  chairs. 

Mrs.  Doremas's  ideas  of  household  decoration  dated 
from  a  period  in  which  every  article  of  furniture  was 
supposed  to  be  handsome  enough  to  speak  for  itself.  Her 
busying  herself  about  it  now  was  the  unconscious  opera 
tion  of  a  habit  of  not  letting  anything  speak  for  itself  if 
she  could  help  it.  Neith  suspected  her  Great-Aunt's 
housewifely  activities  as  being  purely  disciplinary ;  a  sort 
of  renewal  of  the  act  of  possession,  without  which  there 
might  be  who  knows  what  insubordination  even  among 


m  NO.  26  JAYNE  STREET 

the  sofas  and  consoles.  She  dragged  a  chair  out  of  its 
lawful  relation  to  the  light  and  filled  its  squared  arms 
with  a  round  cushion  as  she  answered  her  niece's  im 
plied  question. 

"Only  Bruce  and  Millicent.  They  are  to  join  Mrs. 
Winthrop  Lennox  at  the  opera  afterward,  so  I  asked 
them  just  to  drop  in." 

"Oh,  I'm  glad,"  Neith  assented.  "I  have  been  want 
ing  to  see  Bruce  for  an  age."  What  she  was  thinking  was, 
how  like  Aunt  Doremas  to  catch  her  grand-nephew  at 
the  moment  of  juxtaposition  to  the  Winthrop  Lennoxes. 
It  was  one  of  the  ways  she  had  of  rendering  tolerable  a 
man  who  had  no  claim  on  her  attention  other  than  being 
her  niece's  husband.  It  was  just  then  that  Neith  caught 
the  dull  thud  of  Aunt  Emmaline's  door  and  repeated  her 
intention  of  running  right  up  to  dress. 

Mrs.  Doremas  was  still  wearing  the  handsome  gown 
in  which  she  had  attended  two  teas  and  a  reception  that 
afternoon,  and  her  heavy  furs  were  lying  across  a  chair 
as  earnest  of  her  intention  not  to  change  again.  Neith 
hesitated  on  the  point  of  offering  to  carry  the  black 
sables  upstairs  for  her,  and  was  lost. 

"Where's  Emmy?"  Aunt  Doremas  demanded. 

"Dressing,  I  imagine.  We  just  ran  around  to  the 
General's  for  a  minute."  Neith  made  the  best  of  matters 
by  including  herself.  It  would  never  do  to  let  Becky  im 
agine  that  Emmy  had  started  off  alone.  "Some  business 
he  telephoned  about,"  she  hastily  interposed.  "Emmy 
can  tell  you  about  it.  I  must  fly." 


NO.  26  JAYNE  STREET  33 

Neith  had  the  faculty  of  quick  toilets,  but  she  lingered 
unnecessarily  now,  laving  her  face  with  scented  water 
and  massing  her  soft  hair  with  broad  shell  pins  that 
matched  its  brownness. 

If  the  Aunts  were  to  have  one  of  their  ridiculous 
scenes  about  Emmy's  visit  to  the  General,  they  had 
better  get  it  over  with  before  dinner.  Not  but  what  Aunt 
Emmaline  was  foolish  enough  .  .  .  old  maids  always 
were,  she  supposed  .  .  .  Neith  paused  in  her  dressing  for 
the  start  of  a  creeping  chill  that  had  found  its  way  to  her 
consciousness  rather  frequently  of  late.  Was  Aunt 
Emmy's  foolish  femininity  something  that  went  with 
being  .  .  .  being  unmarried  .  .  .  something  you  could  n't 
help,  like  arterio-sclerosis,  which  was  what  most  people 
were  supposed  to  have  at  fifty-six. 

Neith  was  twenty-six  herself  .  .  .  and  going  to  live 
alone  in  a  flat  in  Jayne  Street.  The  pleasantry  of  the 
afternoon  came  back,  and  with  it  the  magic  of  associa 
tion,  like  the  rosy  glow  of  wine  through  chilled  glass.  Her 
own  things  again,  the  lovely  things  she  and  her  father 
had  so  lovingly  collected,  her  own  friends,  Madelon 
Sherrod  .  .  .  that  pleasant  young  war  correspondent  .  .  . 
and  Adam  Frear.  Oh,  she  would  get  the  better  of  what 
ever  came  from  Aunt  Emmaline  in  her  blood. 

Neith's  wardrobe  was  conscientiously  slender  .  .  . 
there  were  people  she  and  her  father  had  known  in 
France  .  .  .  Italy,  too.  But  in  anticipation  of  Millicent's 
crisp  toilets  she  selected  the  one  gown  by  which  she 
should  be  able  to  refute  whatever  Millicent  might  be 


34  NO.  26  JAYNE  STREET 

disposed  to  think  of  it,  by  mentioning  the  name  of  the 
designer.  It  was  not  new,  but  Millicent  had  only  seen  it 
once.  There  was  an  underslip  of  smooth  satiny  brown, 
a  trifle  darker  than  her  hair,  and  over  it  a  tunic  of  soft, 
sea-cavern  blue,  threaded  with  ripples  of  silver.  Blue 
stones  set  in  silver  went  with  the  dress,  but  after  a  quiet, 
uncalculating  look  at  herself  in  the  tall  old  mirror,  Neith 
laid  them  gently  aside.  Thoughts  of  her  father,  and  the 
little  sacrifices  he  had  made  to  give  them  to  her,  sent  her 
to  the  window,  where,  outlined  against  a  sky  blue  as  her 
jewels,  a  cross  lifted  from  the  roof  of  a  building  opposite, 
confident  with  light.  To  Neith  there  was  nothing  theatri 
cal  nor  inappropriate  in  that  cross.  Europe,  the  war,  her 
own  abiding  loss,  had  made  her  very  tender  of  the  sym 
bols  of  the  unspeakable  things  of  the  heart.  The  steady 
glow  of  it,  the  white  wandering  star  behind  it,  the  deli 
cate  tracery  of  budding  boughs  against  the  sky's  aerial 
blue,  came  to  her  like  the  promise  of  something  the 
world  wanted  very  much.  It  dispelled  the  cold  drop  that 
had  distilled  at  the  pit  of  her  heart  from  the  chill  of  the 
moment  past,  touched  her  with  the  thrill  of  the  soul's 
immemorial  quest.  She  stood  so  long  looking  out  at  the 
Square  in  a  gentle  muse  of  spring  that  Millicent  came  up 
to  call  her. 

§6 

Much  as  Neith  had  wished  to  hear  a  strike  discussed 
by  some  of  the  parties  to  it,  watching  Aunt  Doremas 
doing  it  turned  out  not  a  pleasant  affair.  There  was  a 


NO.  26  JAYNE  STREET  35 

great  deal  of  Aunt  Doremas.  She  had  wattles;  there  were 
deep  purple  puffs  under  her  eyes,  and  at  table  with  the 
light  from  the  chandelier  shining  on  her  from  above,  it 
was  impossible  not  to  discover  that  the  front  of  her  hair 
did  not  belong  to  the  back.  She  was  fond  of  her  dinner  in 
a  way  difficult  to  reconcile  with  a  hopping  rage  at  the 
conduct  of  the  mill  workers  at  Marcy.  She  and  Emma- 
line  were  already  at  it  when  the  cousins  came  down,  in  a 
sort  of  ladies'-chain  of  condemnation  and  corroboration. 

It  was,  in  Mrs.  Doremas's  opinion,  "exactly  like"  the 
operatives  to  go  on  a  strike  just  when  there  was  a  chance 
of  the  owners  making  something.  It  was  like  their  im 
providence,  their  inherent  incapacity  for  knowing  what 
was  for  their  best  good. 

Was  it  thinkable,  with  a  sixty  per  cent  war  profit  cut 
off  short  by  the  stoppage  of  the  mills,  that  the  owners 
could  afford  increased  wages  and  double  pay  for  over 
time!  How  was  business  to  go  on  unless  there  was  co 
operation,  mutual  consideration! 

"Consideration!"  said  Mrs.  Doremas.  "They've  no 
consideration  for  anything  but  their  own  backs  and 
stomachs !  Get  another  bottle  of  the  Du  Guesclin,  Hor- 
lick,  Mr.  Haven  does  n't  care  for  the  sherry  —  and  you 
might  bring  another  glass  —  Consideration !  It  is  all 
envy  of  seeing  the  money  go  into  other  people's  pockets. 
Envy  and  greed.  That's  all  one  gets  from  the  working- 
class  nowadays.  Have  another  bit  of  the  fish,  Millicent, 
there 's  only  a  roast  and  an  artichoke  coming,  and  some 
kind  of  a  salad.  You  may  fill  my  glass,  too,  Horlick," 


36  NO.  26  JAYNE  STREET 

"Not  that  one  minds  their  getting  a  raise  of  wages 
once  in  a  while,"  Emmaline  bumped  along  like  an  empty 
tow  in  her  sister's  wake,  "if  they  did  anything  with  it, 
but  they  think  of  nothing  but  just  spend,  spend." 

Neith  laughed.  "I  spend  mine,  too,"  she  explained. 

"Oh,  but,  Neith,"  Aunt  Emmy  was  firm,  "the  things 
they  spend  it  for!  If  you'd  just  look  at  the  girls  going 
along  Fourteenth  Street.  White  shoes!  And  such  hats! 
You  may  give  me  a  little  more  of  the  sauce,  Horlick." 

"Beer!"  said  Aunt  Doremas,  with  such  emphasis  that 
for  a  moment  Horlick  thought  he  had  received  an  order. 
"Positively  buckets  of  it  going  along  the  street  every 
day.  And  when  they  get  into  trouble  it's  our  sort  has  to 
help  them." 

"They  never  seem  to  think  that  the  rich  have  obliga 
tions,"  Aunt  Emmaline  ran  true  to  form.  "There's  all 
our  war  charities.  I'm  told  there  is  n't  a  child  under  five 
years  of  age  left  in  Poland.  If  they  would  only  think  of 
that  one  thing  — " 

Neith  was  thinking.  It  was  the  sort  of  thing  that  often 
came  over  her  compellingly  as  she  sat  at  table  with  her 
Aunts,  with  the  rich  smell  of  food  and  the  clink  of  cut- 
glass  and  silver.  At  such  times  her  Aunt  Doremas's 
hands  had  a  positive  fascination  for  her,  moving  stub- 
bily  among  the  wine  glasses,  dull  colored  from  over 
feeding,  stiff  with  rings;  fat,  self-contained  looking  dia 
monds,  the  four  Doremas  emeralds  set  in  platinum  .  .  . 
Aunt  Emmaline's  hands,  flabby  and  whitish  as  was 
everything  she  did  ,  ,  ,  Neith  wished  she  could  think 


NO.  26  JAYNE  STREET  37 

of  something  to  bring  Bruce  Havens  into  the  conver 
sation. 

"It  makes  one  agree  with  Eustace,  that  investments 
that  have  to  depend  on  Labor  are  hardly  worth  having 
these  days."  Poor  Emmy  had  fallen  a  victim  to  her  own 
invincible  disposition  to  edge  the  conversation  in  the 
General's  direction.  The  silence  that  ensued,  on  this 
introduction,  lured  her  to  destruction.  "He  was  telling 
me  only  this  evening  of  such  an  interesting  development 
.  .  .  patriotic,  too.  If  only  Frances  were  not  so  —  so 
peculiar."  She  primped  her  mouth  Chris tianly  over  the 
tolerant  word. 

"If  that  old  gazook  has  another  gold  brick  like  he 
sold  Hart  and  Shafner,"  Millicent's  husband  squared 
himself  to  the  attack,  "Frances  will  have  to  be  a  lot 
more  peculiar  than  she  has  ever  been  to  save  him  from 
the  grand  jury."  Quite  without  his  volition  his  fork, 
which  he  had  been  holding  properly  as  MiUicent  had 
taught  him,  interlaced  itself  upright  between  his  thumb 
and  little  finger.  It  was  an  effect  Aunt  Emmaline  often 
had  on  him,  particularly  when  she  chose  to  be  cattish 
about  the  second  Mrs.  Rittenhouse. 

"I  suppose  Eustace  is  bound  to  suffer  in  his  dealings 
with  that  sort  of  people."  Emmy's  old  face  quivered 
with  the  effort  of  maiden  dignity.  "He's  been  brought 
up  among  gentlemen." 

The  subtilty  of  her  retort  lay  in  the  implication  that 
all  Millicent's  family  felt  that  Millicent's  husband 
had  n't.  Michigan  had  produced  him  and  any  number  of 


38  NO.  26  JAYNE  STREET 

places  had  done  their  ineffectual  best  to  put  their  stamp 
on  him.  He  had  thick  shoulders,  an  office  in  Wall  Street, 
and  either  a  trifle  too  much  width  across  the  jaw  or  too 
little  above  the  eyes.  Aunt  Doremas  had  always  disap 
proved  of  him  for  reasons  succinct  and  inclusive. 

"Who,"  she  demanded  when  Millicent  presented  him 
as  her  fiance,  "ever  heard  of  a  Havens?" 

"Whoever  has  n't,"  Millicent  had  spiritedly  replied, 
"is  going  to."  Which  seemed  likely  to  be  the  case.  At 
present  he  was  something  over  thirty  and  was  worth 
two  million  dollars. 

Neith  was  extraordinarily  interested  in  him.  Millicent 
she  understood  perfectly  and  with  a  quiet,  cousinly 
affection,  touched  with  the  realization  that  they  two 
were  the  sole  representatives  in  their  generation  of  the 
Van  Droom-Schuylers.  Millicent  was  what  Aunt  Emma- 
line  might  have  been.  In  time  she  would  become  what 
Emmaline  was  now  except  for  what  sat  so  graciously 
upon  her,  happy  marriage  and  maternity.  But  Bruce 
Havens  was  to  Neith  one  of  those  American  factors 
which,  like  the  strike,  would  have  to  be  studied  to  be 
understood. 

She  liked  his  coming  to  the  defense  of  poor  Frances 
Rittenhouse,  especially  as  she  was  sure  that  his  instinct 
would  be  to  feel  that  any  woman  living  away  from  her 
husband  must  be  rather  vaguely  to  blame  for  it.  But  he 
was  not  to  be  made  to  read  into  Frances's  refusal  to  per 
mit  the  sale  of  the  Eleventh  Street  house  anything  more 
than  it  had  turned  out  to  be,  a  far-sighted  provision  for 


NO.  26  JAYNE  STREET  39 

her  aged  and  alienated  husband,  whose  senile  dream  it 
was  to  recover  the  two  fortunes  he  had  spent  by  flinging 
this  last  remnant  of  his  property  after  them. 

"  If  it 's  gentlemen  he  ss  hankering  to  deal  with,"  Bruce 
countered  to  Aunt  Emmy's  harmless  dart,  "he'll  have 
his  wish.  Son  Eustace  was  lunching  at  the  Club  to-day 
with  the  Head  of  Aviation." 

"Eustace  back!"  cried  both  the  cousins;  Millicent 
finishing  with,  "Oh,  Bruce,  and  you  never  told  me!" 
Neith's  more  intimate  acquaintance  with  soldier  home 
coming  bringing  her  in  with  the  anxious  hope,  "Not 
invalided?" 

"I've  a  notion  the  Government  sent  for  him." 

"You  think  we're  going  in?"  Everybody  was  in  that 
but  Aunt  Doremas  who  settled  these  things  for  herself 
without  asking  anybody. 

"I  think  the  country  has  had  about  all  it  can  stand." 

"So  improvident  of  Frances  to  let  him  go  in  the  first 
place."  Aunt  Doremas  had  been  silent  as  long  as  she  felt 
called  upon  to  be  at  her  own  table.  "Much  the  Belgian 
Government  would  have  done  for  her  if  he  had  broken 
his  neck.  Horlick,  you  may  tell  the  cook  that  the  arti 
chokes  are  a  trifle  underdone,  and  the  next  time  we'll 
have  some  of  that  California  claret  served  with  them. 
Your  father,  Millicent,  used  to  say  that  claret  was  the 
only  wine  that  really  belonged  with  artichokes." 

"The  poor,  dear  General,  too,"  chimed  Emmaline; 
"you  remember  how  fond  he  was  of  artichokes." 

"Horlick — "  said  Aunt  Doremas,  and  stopped. 


40  NO.  26  JAYNE  STREET 

Neith  knew  perfectly  that  her  aunt  had  been  about  to 
order  a  portion  of  the  artichokes  set  aside  to  be  carried 
to  the  General,  and  had  reconsidered  it  because  Emma- 
line  had  thought  of  it  first. 


It  was  not  until  coffee  was  served  in  the  back  parlor, 
and  Millicent  had  gone  off  to  confer  with  the  nursery 
governess  by  telephone,  that  Neith  got  around  again  to 
discovering  what  Bruce  Havens  thought  of  the  prospect 
of  war.  He  was  turning  his  cigar  in  his  firm  and  rather 
thin-lipped  mouth,  with  his  back  to  the  heavy  black 
marble  mantel,  and  his  legs  rather  wide  apart.  It  was  an 
attitude  that  brought  out  the  suggestion  of  corpulency 
in  his  figure,  which  seemed  to  belong  to  the  power  and 
possession  of  two  million,  and  brought  smouldering 
spurts  of  annoyance  from  Aunt  Doremas. 

Behind  him  the  black,  porphyry-veined  over-mantel 
supported  a  Sevres  vase  of  Victorian  style  and  expen- 
siveness.  Carved  chairs  of  the  same  heavy  intricacy 
flanked  the  massive  fire-basket,  and  unwieldy  fire  tools 
of  hammered  brass  leaned  against  the  marble  bosses. 

Suppose  Michigan  had  produced  him  and  his  mining 
schemes  had  been  developed  in  Alaska!  He  was  as  much 
/  a  product  of  the  Van  Droom-Schuyler  point  of  view,  of 
their  heavy  furniture  and  heavy  traditions  of  prosper 
ity  and  respectability,  as  if  he  had  been  born  among 
them. 

"The  way  I  look  at  it  is,  we  are  already  in  so  far  as 


NO.  26  JAYNE  STREET  41 

money  and  credit  goes."  Havens  had  the  air  of  deliver 
ing  his  opinion  like  a  public  speech,  a  habit  acquired  by 
men  whose  wives  are  not  in  the  habit  of  contradicting 
them.  "We  are  in  so  far  that  we  can't  afford  to  be  out 
when  the  settlement  comes.  We  have  to  get  in  with  both 
feet  to  keep  them  from  pulling  the  leg  that  is." 

"But  is  n't  there  a  great  deal  of  anti-war  feeling 
among  the  —  the  masses?"  Neith  ventured.  "This 
strike  at  Marcy  — " 

"That's  a  reason.  The  way  I  look  at  it.  The  country- 
is  getting  so  restless,  no  telling  where  we'll  land  if  we 
don't  have  something  to  pull  it  together.  With  Labor 
getting  so  fed  up  with  war  wages,  and  all  this  pro-Ger 
man  propaganda,  something  is  bound  to  break  loose. 
I  was  for  keeping  out  as  long  as  possible,  but  there's 
a  limit!  Looks  like  we  have  to  have  a  war  once  in  a 
while  just  to  keep  things  together.  That's  the  way  I 
look  at  it." 

Millicent  came  back,  young,  matronly,  and  apolo 
getic  in  her  green  and  silver  gown.  "Bruce,  dear,  do  you 
mind  if  we  start  early  enough  to  stop  at  home  for  a 
moment?  Ellen  telephones  that  Junior  won't  say  his 
prayers  to  Fraulein  because  she's  a  German  and  God 
can't  love  the  Germans.  Where  do  children  pick  up  such 
things!" 

"Oh,  well,  he  is  n't  so  far  wrong,  I  guess."  Bruce 
junior's  father  chuckled,  looking  at  his  watch.  "We 
won't  miss  anything  but  the  overture." 

"Mrs.  Lennox  herself  never  gets  there  until  the  mid- 


42  NO.  26  JAYNE  STREET 

die  of  the  first  act.  But  I  have  been  so  careful  not  to  let 
any  hate-thoughts  come  near  the  children.  I  suppose  if 
there's  war  we'll  have  to  let  Fraulein  go  altogether,  and 
it  is  so  impossible  to  get  good  nursery  governesses  in 
this  country." 

Aunt  Doremas  remembered  her  grievance.  "When 
you've  had  as  much  to  do  with  the  working- classes  as 
I  have,"  she  warned  her  niece,  "you'll  find  that  they 
have  no  consideration  for  anything  or  anybody.  I  'm  not 
sure  but  I  agree  with  you,  Bruce,"  she  conceded  hand 
somely.  "A  war  will  be  a  good  thing  for  them." 

Ill 

:    -  .  §8    |  IJIJ  ;:    /. 

NEITH  turned  back  from  the  head  of  the  stairs  from 
which  she  had  seen  Millicent  off,  to  fetch  a  crepe  shawl 
for  Aunt  Emmy.  In  the  five  or  six  minutes  required  to 
reach  the  back  parlor  with  it,  she  had  run  swiftly 
through  all  the  incertitudes  of  the  past  five  or  six 
months  and  come  to  a  conclusion.  She  came  to  it  with 
all  the  latent  strength  of  her  Puritan  strain  because  a 
few  minutes  before,  as  she  listened  to  Bruce  Havens 
talking  war  from  the  point  of  view  of  Wall  Street,  she 
had  had  doubts. 

Would  she  ever  be  able  to  make  out,  behind  this  con 
fused  and  cloudy  personal  opinion,  the  America  of  her 
own  and  her  father's  imagining?  This  America,  which 
she  had  tried  to  think  of  for  three  years  as  holding 


NO.  26  JAYNE  STREET  43 

sanely  apart,  was  showing  itself  speckled  all  through 
with  little  scabby  private  issues. 

Everybody  had  them,  and  there  was  n't  even  a  com 
mon  disorder  traceable  as  their  source.  Or  was  there? 
Was  the  lack  of  a  unifying  understanding  of  social  issues 
owing  to  an  essential  lack  of  a  unifying  principle  in 
Democracy?  She  recalled  the  difficulties  the  few  Ameri 
cans  she  had  known  in  Europe  had  in  making  clear  their 
position.  Had  n't  they,  in  fact,  a  position?  Were  they 
simply  being  caromed  by  events  into  the  pocket  pre 
pared  for  them? 

Practically  everybody  agreed  that  within  a  month  or 
six  weeks  America  would  be  in  the  big  fight;  even  Fleeta, 
who  was  confident  that  the  fighting  would  be  on  Ameri 
can  soil  for  the  right  not  to  fight.  The  editor  of  The 
Proletariat,  who  looked  to  be  as  far  derived  and  Ameri 
can  as  any  Van  Droom-Schuyler,  was  inclined  to  accept 
the  war  as  insuring  the  downfall  of  Capitalism,  and 
Bruce  Havens  welcomed  it  as  a  method  of  reducing 
Labor  to  amenable  terms.  If  there  was  any  common 
ground  among  them,  it  was  the  concession  that  there 
was  something  seriously  wrong  with  America  that  there 
was  no  effective  way  of  righting  except  by  turning  the 
world  into  a  sort  of  Donnybrook  Fair,  which  only  came 
to  an  end  when  everybody  had  his  head  well  broken. 

The  fine  sense  with  which  Neith  had  begun  the  eve 
ning,  of  the  house  in  Jayne  Street  as  a  coign  of  vantage 
from  which  to  view  the  American  scene,  had  dropped 
appreciably.  Here,  at  least,  the  point  of  view  was  estab- 


44  NO.  26  JAYNE  STREET 

lished,  the  coast  of  opinion  mapped  and  charted.  But  in 
the  isolation  of  Jayne  Street  who  knew  what  drenching 
seas  might  break  over  her?  It  was  at  this  point,  the  low 
est  she  had  known  since  the  Jayne  Street  project  had 
been  broached  in  her  mind,  that  she  came  to  her  de 
cision.  She  would  tell  the  Aunts  once  and  for  all  what 
she  was  doing,  and  why  leaving  them. 

In  the  twenty  steps  that  lay  between  that  moment 
and  what  she  knew  to  be  the  most  important  pronounce 
ment  of  her  life,  Neith  reviewed  the  whole  of  her  twenty 
years  or  so  of  personal  consciousness.  It  had  begun  with 
her  coming  down  this  same  stair,  a  child  of  six  or  seven, 
to  meet  her  father  returning  from  the  hospital  to  which 
her  mother  had  been  taken  after  the  carriage  accident, 
and  realizing  in  a  dim,  childish  way  that  she  should 
never  see  him  again  quite  the  man  he  had  been,  and 
never  coming  to  her  in  any  other  way  than  alone  and  in 
need  of  comforting.  It  was  from  this  door,  held  open  by 
a  young  and  obviously  disapproving  Horlick,  she  had 
left  with  him,  a  shy,  devoted  girl  of  fourteen,  on  that 
first  trip  abroad,  from  the  delightful  intimacies  of  which 
he  had  never  had  the  courage  to  surrender  her.  He  had 
never,  indeed,  had  the  courage  to  return  to  his  native 
land  until  Neith  herself  had  reached  an  age  to  combat 
the  united  family  opposition  to  their  vagabond  way  of 
life  and  her  informal  bringing-up.  Instantaneous  pictures 
of  these  comings  and  goings  streamed  through  her  mind 
as  she  passed  along  the  hall  to  drop  the  scarf  across  Aunt 
Emmy's  thick  shoulders. 


NO.  26  JAYNE  STREET  45 

§9 

Instinctively  Neith  took  up  a  position  in  front  of  the 
fireplace  where  a  few  minutes  since  she  had  watched 
Bruce  Havens,  thinking  how  inevitable  it  was  that  Mil- 
licent  should  have  married  him.  As  she  stood  warming 
first  one  bronze  slipper  and  then  the  other,  to  give  a 
casual  air  to  what  she  was  about  to  say,  it  came  strongly 
home  to  Neith  that  at  least  those  traditions  and  this 
furniture  had  not  produced  her.  Her  father  had  re 
nounced  them  for  her  long  ago.  With  a  quickened  sense 
of  finding  herself  at  his  side  again,  she  turned  to  confront 
the  aggressive  correctitude  of  Great- Aunt  Doremas.  It 
was  then  that  she  perceived  that  the  sisters  had  been 
quarreling  again  over  Aunt  Emmy's  visit  to  the  General. 

It  hardly  seemed  the  time,  in  view  of  what  she  had  to 
say  for  herself,  for  one  of  Neith's  sallies  to  the  rescue  of 
Aunt  Emmy.  At  the  same  time  the  necessity  for  saying 
something  sharpened  her  own  desire  to  cut  herself  off 
definitely  from  all  the  implications  of  poor  Emmy's  frus 
trate  maidenhood.  While  she  turned  over  several  open 
ings  in  her  mind,  Aunt  Emmy  seized  the  opportunity 
with  her  usual  aptitude  for  the  wrong  thing. 

"I  suppose  that  I  owe  you  an  apology,  Neith.  It 
seems  I've  been  leading  you  into  improprieties."  She 
primped  herself  to  a  feeble  malignity.  "Becky  is,  so 
upset  at  my  running  in  to  see  dear  Eustace  for  a  few 
minutes  this  evening  .  .  .  She  must  think  it  much  worse 
at  your  age  ..." 


46  NO.  26  JAYNE  STREET 

"It's  for  not  knowing  better  at  your  age!"  Aunt 
Becky's  wrath  must  have  had  a  touch  of  sincerity,  for 
she  made  a  false  move.  "It  is  n't  as  if  there  had  n't  been 
anything  between  you  and  Eustace  ..." 

Neith  did  not  know  how  much  truth  there  was  in  that 
old  story  that,  before  he  had  settled  on  the  unhappy 
Frances,  the  General  had  cast  a  speculative  eye  in  the 
direction  of  Aunt  Emmy.  Even  so  slight  an  admission 
of  her  having  been  the  object  of  legitimate  "attentions" 
was  a  great  restorer  of  the  poor  lady's  dignity. 

"It  is  n't  as  if  you  had  n't  had  opportunity,  sister,  to 
observe  how  I  conduct  myself  in  a  delicate  situation," 
she  soared. 

"Or  as  if  we  had  n't  outgrown  all  sorts  of  silly  no 
tions  about  what  unmarried  women  can  or  cannot  do." 
Neith  snatched  the  conversation  at  its  highest  point. 
"Now  if  Aunt  Emmy  should  go  off  and  set  up  house 
keeping  for  herself,  as  I  am  thinking  of  doing!" 

Silence  fairly  crackled  under  this  announcement. 

"You've  been  so  good  to  me  here,"  she  plunged  on, 
"I've  almost  forgotten  what  I  came  back  to  America  to 
do.  I'm  afraid  I  have  imposed  on  you.  But  I've  found 
what  I've  been  looking  for,  and  I  shall  have  everything 
arranged  in  a  week  or  two.  If  you  can  still  keep  me  so 
long." 

There  were  cigarettes  on  the  mantel,  of  the  expensive 
gold-tipped  kind  Aunt  Doremas  sometimes  served  to  her 
men  visitors.  Neith  had  a  wild  idea  of  lighting  one  of 
them.  Not  that  she  had  ever  done  such  a  thing.  She  felt 


NO.  26  JAYNE  STREET  47 

a  desperate  need  of  some  such  visible  symbol  of  her  re 
pudiation  of  the  family  attitude,  something  comparable 
in  her  Aunts'  minds  with  the  thing  she  was  trying  to  say, 
something  that  would  make  way  against  their  heavy 
astonishment  without  the  need  of  saying  anything.  Her 
hands  itched  toward  the  packet,  but  she  took  a  firmer 
hold  on  the  mantel  and  made  another  effort  to  lift  the 
conversation  up  out  of  the  pit  into  which  it  had  dropped. 

"I've  found  something  that  will  do  very  nicely.  Over 
in  Jayne  Street."  There  seemed  to  be  astonishingly  little 
she  could  say. 

"Why,  Neith  .  .  .  Neithie,  dear  ..."  Aunt  Emmy's 
voice  quavered  to  a  full  stop,  coasting  along  the  edge  of 
hysteria. 

"Of  course  it's  dull  for  you  here,  Neithie  ..."  she 
began  again.  "But  you  did  n't  seem  to  want  com 
pany.  Your  father,  you  know.  We  'd  have  been  only  too 
glad..." 

"If  you  think,"  boomed  Aunt  Doremas,  "that  I  have 
been  calling  on  everybody  this  winter  .  .  .  people  that 
aren't  anybody — "  There  was  a  singular  movement 
up  and  down  between  her  wattles.  It  came  over  Neith 
astonishingly  that  she  had  dealt  these  two  old  people  a 
blow.  They  had  thought  for  her  in  their  way,  counted 
on  her. 

"  When  I  think  of  the  people  I've  invited  down  to  the 
country  this  summer  ..."  Mrs.  Doremas  stood  up,  her 
old  head  trembling.  "And  my  own  brother's  child  — 
grandchild,"  she  corrected,  and  found  a  new  flavor  of 


48  NO.  26  JAYNE  STREET 

indignation  in  the  term  —  "my  own  grand-niece  flying* 
in  the  face  of  everything!" 

"But  goodness  me,  Aunty! "  Neith  tried  for  lightness; 
"I'm  only  flying  to  Jayne  Street.  And  I  hope  you  won't 
leave  me  out  of  your  plans  for  the  summer  ..." 

"Exactly, "Mrs.  Doremas  delivered  at  large,  "like  one 
of  the  lower  classes.  Two  weeks  of  the  Fresh  Air  Fund." 

"  They  've  no  right,  no  right  at  all ! "  Neith  told  herself. 

"I  can't  think  what  your  poor  father  would  say." 
Aunt  Emmy  wiped  her  eyes.  "Dear  Irving  was  always 
so  fond  of  me."  As  usual  the  poor  lady  had  furnished 
ammunition  to  the  enemy. 

"It's  what  we  always  planned  to  do  together,"  Neith 
returned  quietly.  "To  live  among  the  people  and  get  to 
know  our  own  country.  And  now  that  he  is  n't  here, 
can't  you  see  that  my  greatest  happiness  .  .  .  You  must 
not  think  of  it  as  leaving  you.  I'll  be  in  and  out  a  dozen 
times  a  day.  Just  around  the  corner,  Twenty-Six  Jayne 
Street.  That  house  with  the  lovely  Georgian  door. 

"The  Severences  lived  in  Jayne  Street,"  Aunt  Emmy 
recalled.  "You  used  to  be  fond  of  Amy,  Sister." 

"Amy  Severence  did  n't  live  there  alone.  And  I'm  sure 
I  did  n't  know  you  wished  to  meet  people  who  are  not 
in  Society,  Neith.  One  picks  up  such  peculiar  notions 
abroad."  And  having  thus  intimated  that  her  niece's 
bringing-up  had  turned  out  as  she  had  always  said  it 
would,  Aunt  Doremas  prepared  to  withdraw.  Not,  how 
ever,  until  she  had  removed  the  subject  beyond  the  pale 
of  discussion. 


NO.  26  JAYNE  STREET  49 

"I  hope  I  may  take  it  for  granted,  since  you  are  going 
to  live  alone  in  this  way,  that  it  is  alone.  Such  goings-on 
as  one  gets  accustomed  to  when  one  is  n't  in  Society!" 
The  Schuyler  doors,  of  course,  did  n't  slam,  but  Mrs. 
Doremas  managed  her  exit  so  that  this  slight  deficiency 
was  n't  missed. 

"Becky!  Oh  — Neith!  I  hope  you  don't  think  that 
I  —  You  know  how  correct  Becky  is."  But  Ernmaline 
had  her  own  feelings  to  reckon  with.  "I  hope,"  she  said, 
"that  you'll  be  as  happy  as  you  think  you  will." 

Neith  knew  that  there  was  one  way  in  which  she  could 
always  manage  her  maiden  aunt;  it  was  to  treat  her  as 
though  they  were  exactly  the  same  age.  She  came  swiftly 
from  behind  as  Emmy  was  leaving,  and  put  her  arm  as 
far  as  it  would  go  round  the  thick  waist. 

"Emmy,  you  must  stand  by  me!  Can't  you  under 
stand  that  there  might  be  people  who  would  want  to  see 
me,  who  might  want  to  see  a  great  deal  of  me,  who 
would  n't  feel  easy  coming  here?"  You  know  yourself 
that  there  are  times  in  a  woman's  life  when  she  has  to 
have  a  chance  to  be  herself,  to  let  other  people  see  what 
she  really  is  — "  She  knew  exactly  what  Aunt  Emmy 
would  make  of  that,  but  she  knew,  too,  what  sustenance 
for  the  poor  lady's  heart  there  still  was  in  any  sugges 
tion  of  a  sentimental  situation. 

"Oh,  Neith  ...  of  course!  It's  only  that  I  didn't 
want  to  feel  —  left  out!"  They  went  up  the  stair  with 
their  arms  about  one  another,  in  a  whisper  of  sympathy 
and  caution. 


50  NO.  26  JAYNE  STREET 

IV 

§10 

IT  was  only  a  day  or  two  later  that  Neith,  proceeding 
along  Sixth  Avenue  in  search  of  an  upholsterer,  ran  into 
the  strike  at  Marcy.  That  is  to  say,  she  ran  into  Fleeta 
Spence,  who  in  the  pleasant  way  of  the  Village  intro 
duced  her  to  an  upholsterer  with  a  true  artist's  attitude 
toward  his  work,  who  did  your  things  for  you  for  prac 
tically  nothing  compared  to  what  they  charged  you 
uptown. 

Neith  arranged  with  him  for  the  refurbishings  of  two 
lovely  old  hickory  chairs,  decorated  with  intriguing  little 
garlands  in  the  best  Adam  period,  the  property  of  some 
earlier  Schuyler.  Aunt  Emmy  had  produced  them  from 
some  limbo  of  lost  furniture  under  Aunt  Becky's  very 
nose,  which  was  still  in  such  a  state  of  high  disapproval 
that  it  could  not  stoop  even  to  interference.  Having 
directed  their  reinstatement  in  some  remnants  of  blue- 
and-cream  Italian  rep,  salvaged  from  a  bankrupt  Medici 
palace,  the  two  young  women  sauntered  along  Waverley 
Place,  by  way  of  a  window-box-maker's,  back  into 
Sixth. 

There  was  a  kind  of  thick  soup  of  winter  refuse  in  the 
gutters,  but  sparrow  song  distilled  from  the  spring  air 
like  sap.  Even  the  branched  scaffolding  of  the  El.  had  a 
sylvan  look,  its  long  arcaded  shadows  interlaced  with 
light.  Crossing  under  it,  they  came  plump  into  a  brisk, 


NO.  26  JAYNE  STREET  51 

brown  woman,  a  little  older  than  themselves,  who  pre 
sented  herself  in  the  light  of  a  personal  agent  of  the 
strike. 

She  began  by  demanding  to  know  if  they  had  anything 
on  for  that  evening,  and  if  not,  that  they  should  come 
with  her  to  Marcy  by  the  six-fifteen  train.  In  the  inter 
vals  of  her  explaining  that  there  was  to  be  a  mass  meet 
ing  that  night,  from  addressing  which  Adam  Frear  had 
been  interdicted  by  the  police,  Fleeta  introduced  her  as 
Mrs.  Kendries.  "Lutra  Dunham,  you  know,"  after  the 
custom  of  the  Village  which  believed  in  giving  credit 
where  credit  was  due. 

Neith  did  n't  know.  She  recalled  that  there  had  been 
a  Dunham  who  had  married  a  Greenslet  who  married  a 
Schuyler,  which  somehow  accounted  for  the  second  Mrs. 
Rittenhouse  being  considered  a  member  of  the  family, 
but  it  did  not  seem  likely  that  the  brisk  woman  could 
derive  her  distinction  from  that. 

"But  Adam  Frear!"  Fleeta  was  saying.  "I  supposed 
he  could  speak  anywhere.  If  it  had  been  Gurly  Flynn, 
now,  or  even  Me  — "  Fleeta  ran  up  her  colors  and  nailed 
them  to  the  mast. 

"That's  what  becomes  of  Free  Speech  the  moment 
the  country  begins  to  be  interested  in  Militarism!"  And 
before  Mrs.  Kendries  had  completed  her  impressment  of 
Fleeta  and  Miss  Schuyler  in  the  interests  of  the  strike, 
Fleeta  had  invited  them  both  to  a  meeting  of  the  Wom 
an's  International  Peace  Association,  on  Thursday. 

"It  is  n't  that  Adam  has  said  anything  he  ought  n't," 


52  NO.  26  JAYNE  STREET 

Mrs.  Kendries  explained.  "But  they're  afraid  he's  going 
to.  It's  the  small  shopkeepers  this  time.  They  remember 
what  happened  to  them  four  years  ago  — " 

"I'm  beginning  to  think,"  Fleeta  concluded,  "that  if 
you  trace  it  back  you'll  find  it's  always  the  bourgeoisie 
that  are  the  real  obstructionists." 

"Precisely,"  Mrs.  Kendries  accepted  cheerfully,  "it's 
they  that  make  the  bulk  of  your  Peace  parties." 

"It's  not  the  change  that  they  object  to,"  she  pro 
tested  to  Miss  Schuyler,  having  temporarily  reduced 
Fleeta  to  speechlessness,  "but  the  changing.  They'd 
like  the  mill  workers  to  get  more  wages,  it  would  make 
so  much  more  spending.  What  they  can't  bear  is  the  in 
convenience  of  their  getting  it  the  only  way  that  is  open 
to  them." 

"Of  course,"  she  went  on,  "Mr.  Frear  could  carry 
his  point  in  the  courts,  but  there  is  n't  time  for  that. 
What  we  want  is  to  take  as  many  as  possible  down  with 
us  for  a  demonstration." 

Talking  of  demonstrations:  it  appeared  that  Fleeta 
was  also  hot  upon  that  business. 

It  was  popularly  rumored  that  the  President  had  a 
special  secretary  whose  work  it  was  to  count  the  tele 
grams  received  each  day  from  people  who  knew  per 
fectly  how  the  country  ought  to  be  run,  and  arrange 
them  in  two  piles  for  and  against  the  measures  contem 
plated.  Public-minded  persons  telegraphed  on  their  own 
account.  Proletarians  who  were  public-minded,  but 
had  n't  the  quarter  for  a  message,  were  kindly  saved 


NO.  26  JAYNE  STREET  53 

from  exclusion  in  the  general  count  by  Mrs.  Carteret 
Keys,  who  made  special  contributions  for  that  purpose. 
Thus  one  became  Vox  Dei  by  proxy  and  at  a  very  small 
cost,  considering. 

"All  that  we  want  at  Marcy,"  Mrs.  Kendries  ex 
plained  to  Miss  Schuyler,  Fleeta  having  declared  her 
undivided  allegiance  to  International  Peace  and  the 
project  of  chartering  a  car  to  take  conscientiously  ob 
jecting  proletarians  to  Washington  en  masse,  as  many 
of  them  at  least  as  could  be  got  in  a  car  —  "All  that  we 
hope  for,  is  a  demonstration  among  the  workers  for  their 
own  sakes.  There  are  a  good  many  of  them  who  have 
never  had  such  high  wages  before,  and  are  disposed  to 
let  it  go  at  that.  Direck  has  had  trouble  with  them." 

Neith  registered  the  item  for  future  reference.  Work 
ers,  it  seemed,  did  not  always  strike  of  their  own  initia 
tive.  To  Mrs.  Kendries's  plea  for  her  own  presence 
among  the  demonstrators  she  replied  conditionally. 

"If  I  could  get  to  a  telephone  for  a  few  minutes  — " 

She  presently  found  herself  guided  to  a  public  booth 
by  Lutra  Dunham  that  was,  as  Aunt  Doremas  would 
have  called  her.  Actually  she  was  so  much  there  that 
Neith  discovered  that,  without  quite  knowing  where, 
they  had  lost  Fleeta  completely,  swept  away  in  a  flood 
of  history  of  strikes  at  Marcy. 

Marcy  was  a  center,  she  gathered,  for  Labor  agitation 
which  spread  in  widening  rings  over  all  the  country. 
There  was  much  more  that  was  crowded  out  for  the 
moment  by  the  necessity  of  composing  some  sort  of  a 


54  NO.  26  JAYNE  STREET 

fib  that  would  serve  with  the  Aunts,  in  case  Madelon 
Sherrod  failed  her,  as  an  excuse  for  leaving  the  house 
at  the  unaccountable  hour  of  six-fifteen. 

She  had  occasionally  stopped  over  Saturday  night 
with  the  actress  for  the  sake  of  a  Sunday  motor  trip  into 
the  country.  Her  purpose  in  seeking  the  telephone  now 
was  to  persuade  Madelon  to  invite  her  for  that  night  and 
then  to  overlook  her  not  putting  in  an  appearance  until 
eleven  o'clock  in  the  evening. 

Mrs.  Sherrod,  it  turned  out,  had  reasons  for  wishing 
to  see  Neith  particularly,  and  charged  her  with  shopping 
commissions  that  involved  Neith's  coming  to  early  din 
ner  with  her,  and  rendered  the  smallest  fib  unnecessary. 


Whatever  personal  interest  had  edged  Mrs.  Sherrod's 
invitation  did  not  immediately  appear  even  at  the  early 
dinner  which  was  served  in  her  rooms.  Not  at  all  the  sort 
of  rooms  a  successful  actress  would  be  expected  to  have. 
They  had  a  certain  character:  a  character  that  was  of  the 
place,  a  rather  old-fashioned,  but  well-kept  hotel  in  the 
East  Thirtieths.  If  they  had  any  quality  of  Madelon 
Sherrod  in  them,  it  was,  Neith  concluded,  taking  in 
their  dark,  elaborate  woodwork  and  the  inoffensive  dura 
bility  of  the  furnishings,  the  quality  of  a  woman  who 
lived  almost  wholly  outside  herself.  They  were  rooms 
in  which  the  sort  of  thing  happens  that  happens  inevi 
tably  without  any  help  from  its  environment,  and  so  the 
sort  of  rooms  Madelon  Sherrod  would  be  expected  to 


NO.  26  JAYNE  STREET  55 

have.  At  that  moment,  Neith  was  less  interested  in  the 
rooms  than  in  what  their  occupant  could  tell  her  about 
Adam  Frear.  What  he  did,  everybody  could  know.  But 
what  had  produced  him?  From  what,  for  instance,  did 
he  come? 

"Where  do  Americans  with  ideas  come  from?"  Mrs. 
Sherrod  had  demanded  in  return.  "Kansas,  in  this  case, 
or  was  it  Iowa?  Anywhere  but  from  New  York.  It  is 
the  Bertie  Condins  who  won't  admit  to  being  born 
west  of  Broadway  or  south  of  Twenty-Third  Street. 
Men  with  fine- toothed  intellects  combing  the  American 
product  for  the  sort  of  thing  they  would  have  liked  to  do 
themselves  supposing  they  had  been  able  to  do  anything. 
But  all  the  people  who  make  things  happen  come  from 
Kansas,  like  Adam  Frear,  or  Van  Harwood,  from  Cali 
fornia,  and  Direck  Kendries  — " 

"You  know  him?" 

"Bless  you,  I  discovered  him!  On  a  Minnesota  farm. 
He  tramped  eleven  miles  to  see  me  in  *  The  Doll's  House.' 
Called  on  me  at  the  close  of  the  performance  to  say  that 
he  had  decided  to  join  my  company.  Can't  you  see  it  is 
just  the  Squarehead  sort  of  thing  he  would  do.  He 
thought  then  that  he  wanted  to  act,  but  it  was  only  be 
cause  acting  was  the  only  interesting  kind  of  work  he 
had  seen.  He  found  that  out  before  we  got  to  Cincinnati. 
But  the  next  winter  he  turned  up  in  New  York.  He 
found  the  Rand  School  somehow  and  Lutra  Dunham. 
She  did  the  rest." 

"I've  been  wanting  to  ask,  Dunhams  of  Stamford?" 


56  NO.  26  JAYNE  STREET 

"Probably,  but  I  would  n't  mention  it  to  her.  She 
thinks  she's  a  proletarian." 

Neith  returned  to  her  original  inquiry. 

"Is  Mr.  Frear  a  Socialist?" 

"Adam,"  said  Mrs.  Sherrod,  "is  a  mystic  who  denies 
the  existence  of  his  medium." 

People  who  had  heard  her,  rated  being  gossiped  about 
by  Madelon  Sherrod  among  the  major  experiences.  The 
way  in  which  she  collected  the  flotsam  and  jetsam  of 
your  character  from  the  drift  of  talk  and  set  it  asail  on 
her  broad  humanism  was  worth  any  amount  of  conver 
sational  shipwreck.  She  created  you  like  a  role,  and 
displaced  the  shabby  reality  with  her  creation.  But  to 
day,  after  this  brief  and  cryptic  characterization  she 
left  the  discussion  to  the  younger  woman,  who  felt  per 
haps  that  her  interest  demanded  some  extenuation. 

"Father  admired  him  immensely,"  Neith  explained, 
"at  Homburg,  where  we  met  him.  He  had  his  wife  with 
him  then.  I  understand  that  she  has  died  since." 

"As  a  wife,  she  died  years  before.  She  was  childish, 
quite,  for  a  long  time  before  the  end." 

Neith  considered. 

"That  accounts,  perhaps —  Somehow  she  gave  one 
the  impression  that  she  felt  —  thwarted,  and  yet  every 
one  was  talking  of  Mr.  Frear 's  brilliant  possibilities." 

Madelon  responded  with  one  of  her  inimitable  humor 
ous  gestures.  "Other  people's  possibilities  are  apt  to 
be  thwarting.  But  you  must  not  believe  that  Adam  was 
ever  anything  but  kind.  Extraordinarily  kind." 


NO.  26  JAYNE  STREET  57 

"What  I  want  to  know,"  said  Neith,  "is  what  he 
stands  for  that  could  get  a  speech  of  his  interdicted  by 
the  police." 

"For  the  freest  kind  of  Free  Speech.  Freer  than  I  ad 
mit  myself.  I  think  people  have  a  right  not  to  hear.  And 
he  stands  for  change.  Almost  any  kind  of  change.  To 
me  there  are  some  changes  which  are  changes  of  deteri 
oration  and  decay.  And  then  Adam  is  always  trying  to 
get  people  to  apply  their  own  ethics  to  the  other  man's 
situation,  and  they  think  him  sarcastic.  If  there's  one 
thing  the  American  people  can't  stand,  it's  sarcasm. 
Honey,"  she  said,  with  a  sudden  drop  into  seriousness, 
"if  you  are  going  into  this  —  this  ferment  of  ideas  here 
in  America  —  you  don't  want  to  forget  how  new  it  all  is, 
how  untested.  Some  of  it  will  stick,  no  doubt,  but  for  the 
most  part  we  are  just  —  shopping.  We  'd  most  of  us  be 
shocked  at  the  idea  that  we  were  expected  to  take  home 
and  live  with  our  ideas." 

Looking  at  her  directly,  Neith  perceived  a  great  wea 
riness  in  the  actress's  eyes,  and  a  detachment  that  was 
more  than  her  customary  abstraction  just  before  assum 
ing  her  role  of  the  evening.  She  began  to  talk  lightly  of 
matters  suggested  by  Mrs.  Sherrod's  last  word  and  her 
shopping  commission  of  the  afternoon. 

"...  A  dozen  of  each!  If  I  did  n't  know  you  better, 
I  should  call  it  extravagance!" 

"But  we'll  be  on  tour  six  or  eight  weeks.  Did  n't  I 
tell  you?" 

"But  the  play  is  going  so  well!  And  Mr.  Sherrod  — 


58  NO.  26  JAYNE  STREET 

I  saw  him  at  the  opera  —  told  me  he  was  a  fixture  here 

for  all  summer." 

"Yes.  Hershgeimer  is  to  manage  for  me." 

Neith  caught  herself  back.  "One  does  get  a  Wander 

lust  in  the  spring."  She  hoped  it  sounded  casual  enough. 

She  was  glad  it  was  time  to  call  a  taxi  to  take  her  to  her 

train.  Should  she  drop  Madelon  at  the  theater? 


On  the  train  going  to  Marcy,  Neith  had  opportunity 
for  taking  in  and  appreciating  the  company  with  that 
delicate  and  experienced  faculty  developed  in  ten  years 
of  wandering  with  her  father. 

It  was  a  faculty  which  enabled  her  to  extract  from  the 
scene  all  sorts  of  subtilties  of  contrast  and  resemblances, 
and  converging  racial  strains.  It  did  not  succeed,  how 
ever,  in  maintaining  itself  at  the  tempo  of  the  humor- 
esque.  Every  now  and  then  the  frail  fabric  of  her  ap 
preciation  was  rent  by  gusts  of  inherited  or  acquired 
prejudices.  There  were  faces,  particularly  in  the  group 
that  centered  about  the  Kendries,  that  were  the  hall 
mark  of  everything  inimical  to  her  environment.  Around 
the  editor  of  The  Proletariat  there  was  a  circle  of  young 
women  who  had,  as  Madelon  had  put  it,  "shopped" 
extensively  in  bobbed  hair  and  futuristic  social  remedies. 
Between  the  two  Neith  wavered  like  a  candle  in  a  gust. 
The  things  they  said  about  war!  Childish!  The  things 
they  did  n't  know  about  Europe  and  the  things  they  so 
acutely  and  terribly  did  know!  And  the  tone! 


NO.  26  JAYNE  STREET  59 

From  what  she  had  already  heard,  Neith  gathered 
that  the  company  as  a  whole  was  opposed  to  war,  or,  if 
not  opposed,  uninterested.  They  were  untouched  in 
imagination  of  any  of  its  breath-tightening  instances. 
But  about  their  own  enterprises  they  were  crammed  with 
the  time-honored  reactions,  ambushes,  triumphs,  mar 
tyrdoms.  Neith  had  heard  young  soldiers  talk  in  the 
Rest  Stations. 

It  came  over  her  oddly  that  her  own  class,  Great- 
Aunt  Doremas  and  Bruce  Havens,  were  the  protago 
nists  of  these  strategies  and  surprises.  She  gathered 
enough  to  understand  that  Direck  Kendries  was  a  pro 
fessional  labor  organizer  who  moved  freely  over  a  terri 
tory  equal  to  the  whole  of  Europe.  Though  he  looked,  at 
first  glance,  like  a  prosperous  working-man,  she  was 
shrewd  enough  to  divine  that  he  was  dressed  for  the 
part.  The  loose,  rough-surfaced  coat  had  been  made  by 
an  experienced  tailor,  the  ease  of  his  carriage  was  supple 
rather  than  indifferent.  But  there  was  no  doubt  about 
his  being  tremendously  and  acutely  on  the  side  of  the 
working-men. 

It  was  singular,  when  one  thought  of  it,  that  there 
was  nobody  of  the  company  who  appeared  in  the  least 
proletarian.  Unless,  of  course,  one  was  thinking  wholly 
in  terms  of  the  European  proletariat.  Even  the  young 
women  with  short  hair  and  long  "lines"  had  a  sharpness 
of  quality  not  to  be  expressed  except  in  the  native  phrase 
of  their  being  "all  there." 

By  degrees  Neith  found  her  attention  fixed  on  the 


60  NO.  26  JAYNE  STREET 

only  member  who  betrayed  any  of  the  stigmata  which 
her  own  rather  meager  experience  had  settled  upon  as 
wage-earning  characteristics.  She  was  moving  from 
group  to  group  when  Neith  first  noticed  her,  without 
seeming  to  belong  to  any  of  them,  joining  vehemently  in 
talk,  quick,  spurting  talk  like  the  jets  of  blue  flame  with 
which  steel  riveters  work.  Something  in  the  thinness 
and  the  slight  warp  of  her  figure,  like  a  sapling  too  much 
exposed  to  the  wind,  in  the  texture  of  her  finger  nails  and 
the  ready-made  smartness  of  her  hat,  ranked  her  with 
the  crowd  of  young  women  that  swarmed  across  Four 
teenth  Street  about  six  in  the  evening. 

In  the  course  of  her  coruscating  progress  this  young 
woman  came  opposite  the  seat  which  Neith  occupied 
alone.  She  sparked  instantly  to  Miss  Schuyler's  friendly 
attention. 

"Are  you  interested  in  Syndicalism?  Don't  you  think 
it's  the  coming  movement?" 

"You  see,  I'm  just  finding  out  about  it." 

"Have  you  met  Hippolyte  Leninsky?"  She  slipped 
into  the  vacant  place,  her  pale,  triangular  face  lighting 
with  the  joy  of  propaganda.  "He's  the  leading  authority 
on  Syndicalism  in  this  country.  He's  wonderful!"  Her 
eyes  had  a  catlike  quality  of  expanding  and  contracting 
with  her  enthusiasms.  Having  picked  up  Neith 's  gaze 
with  her  own,  she  carried  it  down  the  aisle  to  a  tallish 
young  man  whose  strongly  marked  Russian-American 
face  appeared  to  be  dragged  forward  by  the  weight  of 
his  shell-rimmed  glasses.  His  features  bulged  about  the 


NO.  26  JAYNE  STREET  61 

brow  and  squared  across  the  jaw,  running  into  a  peaked 
chin  a  trifle  too  short  for  him.  His  hair  would  have  stood 
up,  had  it  not  been  of  just  the  length  that  caused  it  to 
curve  back  on  either  side  his  forehead  like  incipient 
horns. 

"He's  one  of  the  editors  of  the ,"  Neith 's  new 

acquaintance  remarked  with  pride.  The  name  must  have 
been  Yiddish,  for  it  passed  Miss  Schuyler  completely. 

"I  wish  you'd  tell  me,"  she  interposed,  "who  they  all 
are.  Besides  the  Dunhams  I  know  almost  nobody  — 
and  Mr.  Frear." 

"Is  n't  he  wonderful?"  The  girl  took  in  the  assembled 
company  with  a  glance.  "They're  Intellectuals." 

"Oh!"  said  Miss  Schuyler.  Her  glance,  to  avoid  a 
certain  vacancy,  fixed  inquiringly  upon  her  companion. 

"I  suppose  I  shall  be  one.  I  'm  teaching  school  over  in 
Jersey,  in  the  country.  It  is  n't  as  much  as  I  used  to  get 
shirt-waist  finishing,  but  it  gives  me  time  for  study. 
I  can  get  to  town  on  Saturdays.  I  'm  taking  Sociology 
with  Professor  Bartell.  He's  wonderful,  too!" 

Definite  pointing  movements  of  the  triangular  chin 
indicated  the  man  occupying  the  seat  next  to  the  Ken- 
dries.  Neith  had  heard  his  work  quoted  in  England. 
Beyond  him  was  the  attorney  for  the  Free  Speech 
League.  That  woman  in  blue  talking  to  the  editor  of 
The  Proletariat  was  the  highest-paid  newspaper  woman 
in  New  York. 

"Does  it —  The  Proletariat,  I  mean  —  really  repre 
sent  the  working-classes?"  Neith  wished  to  know. 


62  NO.  26  JAYNE  STREET 

"They  don't  look  like  that,"  she  hastened  to  explain. 
"Do  they  think  like  it?" 

"Well,  it's  been  suspended  publication  twice."  And 
then  with  a  relevance  that  Neith  failed  to  follow,  "Hip- 
polyte  has  had  three  indictments." 

No  doubt  feeling  himself  the  subject  of  comment, 
Hippolyte  strolled  down  the  aisle  toward  them  and  was 
introduced  by  the  young  woman,  who  so  far  had  neg 
lected  to  mention  her  own  name.  Neith  judged  him 
something  over  twenty,  underfed,  and  the  feel  of  his 
hand,  which  he  offered  and  withdrew  too  soon,  not  quite 
wholesome. 

"Wonderful  demonstration,  wonderful!"  he  congrat 
ulated  with  the  air  of  having  produced  it  by  the  process 
of  wringing  his  pale,  clammy  palms.  The  conductor  came 
down  the  car  as  though  he  might  have  forgotten  what  he 
was  there  for,  and  about  halfway  remembered  to  an 
nounce  that  the  next  station  was  Marcy. 


It  was  not,  however,  until  they  reached  the  entrance 
of  the  hall  that  they  saw  anything  of  Adam  Frear. 

They  had  emerged  from  the  train  in  a  region  of  doubt 
ful  lodging-houses  and  down-at-the-heel  business.  From 
this  the  demonstration  straggled  down  a  long  street  of 
shops  bitten  in  close  to  the  pavement  by  half-smoth 
ered  lights,  like  stump  fires  in  old  pastures.  The  street 
issued  at  last  in  a  little  square  of  resigned  and  uniden 
tified  pretensions  where  a  sign,  announcing  that  this 


NO.  26  JAYNE  STREET  63 

was  Crescent  Garden  Hall,  spewed  a  reddened  light 
about  the  entrance.  A  steep  stair  led  in  a  flying  arch  up 
from  the  pavement  in  such  a  way  as  partially  to  mask 
the  saloon  entrance  underneath. 

Across  the  top  of  the  stair  guarding  the  entrance  to 
the  hall  stood  a  row  of  policemen  in  all  the  exasperated 
resignation  to  their  duty,  without  the  fundamental 
good-humor  that  Neith  recalled  in  London  Bobbies  set 
to  stop  a  Suffrage  raid.  Two  streams  of  men  and  women 
moved  along  the  street  and  disappeared  behind  the 
policemen  into  the  open  doorway.  From  time  to  time,  as 
these  streams  tended  to  coagulate  in  the  splash  of  light 
under  the  sign,  the  officers  relieved  the  tedium  of  their 
situation  with  sallies  of  authority.  Always  as  the  arriv 
ing  audience  mounted,  they  lingered  and  looked  back 
with  mingled  expressions  of  sympathy,  curiosity,  and 
triumph.  At  the  focus  of  their  attention,  as  her  own 
party  neared  the  entrance,  Neith  discovered  Adam 
Frear.  He  stood  on  the  stair  a  step  or  two  below  the 
waiting  policemen,  and  as  the  party  of  Intellectuals 
swept  up  beside  him,  he  introduced  them. 

"Meet  my  friends,  Chief." 

The  badgered  officer  had  all  the  appearance  of  a  man 
fond  of  children,  with  rather  rigid  ideas  on  the  subject 
of  women,  not  averse  to  "making  a  little  on  the  side," 
officially,  and  totally  unable  to  understand  why  any 
body  should  wish  things  other  than  they  were.  He  wel 
comed  the  necessity  for  a  show  of  activity  in  respect  to 
the  choking  passages,  incident  to  the  arrival  of  the  dem- 


64  NO.  26  JAYNE  STREET 

onstration.  There  was  nothing  whatever  in  the  Regu 
lations  which  instructed  him  how  to  accept  a  personal 
introduction  to  people  who  insisted  on  making  light  of 
his  authority  and  yet  looked  as  if  they  might  be  pos 
sessed  of  the  mysterious  quality  of  "influence." 

The  checked  stream  moved  on,  quickened  in  volume 
and  interest,  with  good-humored  reluctancy.  Now  and 
then  there  was  a  hint  of  pressure  that  might  easily  have 
broken  into  mass  action.  Friendly  hails  and  suggestions 
reached  Frear,  not  unmixed  with  regret  for  Frear's 
equally  friendly  rejections.  Kendries  edged  in  toward 
the  perplexed  Chief  of  Police  and  opened  the  inqui 
sition. 

"We  came  over  here  because  Mr.  Frear  was  adver 
tised  to  speak,"  he  began  pacifically. 

"Well,  it  looks  like  you're  gonna  be  disappointed." 

"Now,  see  here,  Chief,  you  know  perfectly  well  this  is 
an  unconstitutional  proceeding.  You  could  n't  get  away 
with  it  even  if  you  arrested  every  one  of  us." 

"I  ain't  gonna  arrest  nobody  without  they  ask  for  it," 
affirmed  the  beleaguered  official.  "But  Mr.  Frear  is  n't 
gonna  get  into  that  hall  to-night,  an'  he  knows  it." 

"Not  even  if  he  promises  not  to  make  a  speech?" 

"What  would  you  do,  Chief,"  interposed  the  distin 
guished  Sociologist,  "if  we  decided  to  take  Mr.  Frear 
in  with  us?" 

"Now,  look  here,  Mr.  Frear"  — the  Chief  breathed 
heavily  —  "can't  you  get  your  friends  to  go  along 
peaceable?" 


NO.  26  JAYNE  STREET  65 

"That's  all  right,  Chief,  there  is  n't  going  to  be  any 
trouble." 

Frear  stepped  back  to  give  place  to  his  attorney  for 
what  was  evidently  a  prearranged  interrogatory.  His 
eyes,  steady  and  calculating,  took  the  measure  of  the 
crowd.  Roving  from  face  to  face  they  surprised  Neith. 
From  the  pavement  she  was  taking  in,  absorbedly,  the 
fine  finish  of  the  man,  the  texture  of  his  skin,  the  live 
brownness  of  his  hair,  the  easy  make  of  his  clothing,  his 
manner,  avoiding  description  as  the  perfectly  fashioned 
instrument  leaves  no  mark  upon  the  hand.  He  was 
never  the  sort  of  man  of  whom  it  is  said,  his  figure  is 
short,  or  tall,  his  eyes  this  or  that.  For  the  first  time, 
as  those  eyes  encountered  hers,  Neith  observed  that 
they  sparked  out,  quick  electric  blue,  blue  like  hot  metal. 

He  dropped  quietly  down  the  stair  until  he  stood  be 
side  her.  "Getting  what  you  came  for?" 

"Seeing  how  much  there  is  to  get." 

He  appreciated  that.  "Don't  try  for  facts,"  he  ad 
vised.  "Not  what  are  called  facts.  They  are  confusing. 
This"  —  he  included  the  moving  scene  with  a  move 
ment  of  the  head  —  "what  it  stands  for,  is  the  sum  of 
all  the  facts." 

She  nodded.  "It  is  the  last  thing  I  expected  to  get  in 
America.  You  —  all  these  —  Intellectuals"  —  the  new 
term  came  trippingly  —  "the  people,  and  a  row  of 
policemen  standing  between." 

"Democracy."  He  laughed.  "Half  a  dozen  of  us  spe 
cialists  in  human  living,  social  living.  Five  or  six  hun- 


66  NO.  26  JAYNE  STREET 

dred  workers  wanting  to  hear  what  we  have  to  say,  and 
looking  idly  on  at  our  being  publicly  prevented." 

"But  why?  Who—" 

"Over  there."  He  indicated  a  fringe  of  slowly  moving 
onlookers  on  the  pavement  opposite.  "Representatives 
of  the  local  government  who  have  ordered  the  police  to 
prevent  us  because  their  interests  are  jeopardized."  He 
spoke  aside  to  his  attorney,  and  as  the  crowd  swarmed 
upon  itself  again,  Neith  felt  herself  gently  extricated  and 
piloted  in  the  direction  of  the  highest-paid  woman  re 
porter  who  engaged  a  group  of  the  sidling  bystanders  in 
the  mildly  inquiring  manner  which  was  largely  respon 
sible  for  the  figure  of  her  salary. 

"Would  you  oblige  me"  —  she  fixed  a  squarish  figure 
completely  buttoned  into  a  good,  but  coarse,  spring 
overcoat — "just  what  has  Mr.  Frear  done  that  the 
police  won't  let  him  speak?" 

The  squarish  figure,  which  was  topped  by  a  rather 
anxious,  shop-keeping  face,  was  happy  to  oblige. 

"Four  years  ago  he  stirred  up  a  strike  here  that  lasted 
fourteen  weeks.  Just  one  business  man  after  another 
went  broke."  There  was  a  puzzled  hurt  in  the  voice, 
ending  in  truculence.  "Perfectly  good  business  men  with 
families.  We  don't  want  any  more  of  that.  What's  more, 
we  ain't  going  to  have  it." 

"It  ain't  the  police  that's  stopping  them,"  a  thin  man 
with  a  drooping  mustache  on  a  face  so  short  that  the 
mustache  appeared  to  sprout  directly  from  under  a 
brown  derby,  thrust  in.  "It's  the  citizens." 


NO.  26  JAYNE  STREET  67 

"Citizens?"  The  highest-paid  reporter  tapped  her 
cheek  with  a  meditative  pencil.  "Do  you  mean  those 
people  over  there?" 

"  I  mean  honest- to-God  American  citizens  that  recon- 
nizes  that  other  folks  have  got  a  right  to  live.  We  ain't 
got  anything  against  Mr.  Frear;  it's  all  them  Wops  and 
Guineas  that  come  over  here  to  get  a  square  meal,  and 
right  away  they  go  to  stirring  up  conditions." 

"What's  the  matter  with  him,  anyway?"  demanded 
the  square  figure,  indistinct  in  the  dull  flare  of  the  shop 
windows  behind  him.  "He's  got  a  good  education,  ain't 
he?  Got  a  good  brain?  He  could  make  as  good  a  living  as 
anybody  if  he'd  go  into  some  regular  business.  What 
does  he  want  to  come  here  for,  upsetting  conditions?" 

"I  suppose,"  said  the  reporter,  "that  the  people  felt 
that  way  about  Jesus,  just  at  first."  Perhaps  the  inno 
cence  of  this  remark  was  a  little  overdone.  Something 
of  the  look  of  the  badgered  policeman  crept  over  the 
anxious,  shop-keeping  face. 

"Now,  we  don't  want  any  of  your  sarcasm!" 

He  melted  into  the  shifting  procession  that  traveled 
from  time  to  time  the  length  of  the  pavement  in  response 
to  repeated  urging  of  the  police.  Fragments  of  resentful 
comment  drifted  past. 

"Talk  about  Patriotism  —  " 

"If  the  country  ain't  good  enough  for  'em  as  it  is,  why 
do  they  come  here?" 

"  Well,  I  don't  blame  anybody  for  getting  all  the  wages 
they  can,  but  why  do  they  have  to  upset  everything — " 


68  NO.  26  JAYNE  STREET 

Neith 's  escort  touched  her  on  the  arm.  The  stream 
of  arrivals  had  almost  ceased.  One  or  two  figures  still 
remained  beside  Frear,  but  the  rest  of  the  party  of  In 
tellectuals  was  about  to  pass  into  the  entrance  of  the 
hall.  Neith  and  the  attorney  joined  them. 

§  14 

They  came  out  through  an  unusued  coatroom  to  the 
upper  corner  of  the  hall,  from  which  they  had  a  view  of 
the  audience  and  of  the  platform  from  which  Hippolyte 
Leninsky  was  just  concluding  a  speech. 

The  horns  of  his  hair  fell  forward,  touching  the  un 
necessarily  large  rims  of  his  glasses.  His  whole  body 
slanted  forward  with  the  weight  of  his  denunciation  of 
capitalism  as  a  reincarnation  of  the  personal  devil.  So 
it  seemed  to  Neith,  who,  like  most  neophytes  in  the 
Social  Revolution,  had  her  teeth  rather  set  on  edge  by 
the  note  of  exaggeration.  Having  delivered  himself  on 
the  subject  of  the  evening,  Hippolyte,  copiously  cheered 
by  the  audience,  rose  to  his  peroration,  in  language 
compounded  of  the  best  Rand  School  English  and  the 
dialect  of  Potash  and  Perlmutter. 

Let  them  seize  this  opportunity,  when  they  were 
united  in  the  struggle  for  free  speech  and  better  living 
conditions,  to  register  their  opposition  as  a  working- 
class  to  the  war  that  was  now  being  forced  on  them  by 
the  tricks  of  a  capitalist  class.  (Loud  applause.)  The 
workers  of  America,  shouted  Hippolyte,  had  no  griev 
ance  against  the  workers  of  any  other  country. 


NO.  26  JAYNE  STREET  69 

"Hear!  Hear!" 

Let  their  capitalist  masters  understand  that  they 
were  not,  like  the  unfortunate  proletariat  of  Europe,  to 
be  driven  to  the  murder  of  their  brother  workers.  They 
neither  desired  nor  would  assist  at  any  victory  against 
any  nation  or  group  of  nations  which  involved  treachery 
to  the  sacred  principles  of  Internationalism  and  the 
brotherhood  of  workers. 

"Good  work!" 

"Give  it  to 'em!" 

Let  them  talk  of  fighting  for  the  flag.  There  was  but 
one  flag  for  the  workers  of  the  world,  the  red  flag  of 
working-class  solidarity ! 

Hooray!  Thump!  Thump! 

"Aw — uh !  Ugh ! "  The  response  wavered  and  broke  in 
an  uncertain  growl,  then  a  voice  from  the  rear  of  the  hall : 

"Let  the  flag  alone.  Go  on  with  the  strike!" 

Hippolyte  drew  himself  together  for  one  triumphant 
fling  at  capitalism  and  sat  down  mopping  his  pale, 
bulging  brow. 

Neith  studied  the  audience  with  interest.  How  mod 
ern  they  looked,  and  how  American,  in  spite  of  the  pre 
ponderance  of  foreign  faces.  The  clothes,  of  course! 
Style.  Precisely  the  sort  of  thing  one  sees  in  Fifth 
Avenue,  only  cheaper,  pitifully  cheap,  but  "the  thing," 
and  their  own.  Not  a  hint  of  the  dingy  hand-me-downs 
that  so  belied  the  dignity  of  labor  in  a  London  audience; 
nowhere  the  draggled  "ostridge"  feather,  the  imme 
morial  regalia  of  British  self-respect. 


70  NO.  26  JAYNE  STREET 

Direck  Kendries  was  on  his  feet  by  this  time,  read 
ing  from  a  typewritten  manuscript.  Respectful  silence 
swelled  from  the  audience  and  filled  the  room  like  a 
presence.  Like  bubbles  rising  from  the  bottom  of  a  pond, 
little  grunts  and  splashes  of  amused  triumph  rose  and 
expired  in  breath.  Neith  caught  sentences,  whole  par 
agraphs,  of  what  appeared  excellent  matter,  but  she 
had  lost  the  clue  to  both  the  amusement  and  the  tri 
umph. 

"This  is  a  fight  for  Democracy,  for  Democracy  of  the 
means  of  production  and  sustenance,"  Kendries  read. 
"But  youjmust  remember  that  all  the  Democracy  you 
are  ever  going  to  have  is  the  amount  of  Democracy  you 
can  deliver  between  daylight  and  dark.  Living  Democ 
racy  does  n't  mean  merely  a  particular  way  of  electing 
a  president,  or  even  of  choosing  to  live  under  a  president 
instead  of  a  king.  It  means  a  living  insistence  on  equal 
ity  of  opportunity  to  choose  how  you  will  live.  You  must 
resist,  even  to  the  point  of  dying,  the  effort  to  force  you 
to  choose  inadequate  wages,  insufficient  housing  and 
clothing  and  food.  .  .  .  You  must  live  your  idea  of  De 
mocracy  all  the  harder  because  there  is  a  little  group 
who  refuse  to  live  it  at  all,  who,  while  they  talk  Democ 
racy,  insist  on  living  an  Autocracy  of  wealth.  .  .  . 

"You  are  being  told  that  this  war  is  a  war  against  the 
abuse  of  political  power,  but  I  adjure  you  to  continue 
your  own  good  fight  against  the  abuse  of  economic 
power  ..." 

Mrs.  Kendries  plucked  Neith  from  behind.  They  must 


NO.  26  JAYNE  STREET  71 

go  out  softly,  she  whispered,  not  to  miss  their  train. 
Once  in  the  passage  she  explained  that  Direck  was 
to  remain  at  Marcy  all  night  for  purposes  of  organ 
ization. 

As  they  passed  into  the  street,  Neith  had  a  glimpse 
of  Adam  Frear  swinging  on  ahead  of  them  in  close  con 
sultation  with  his  attorney.  Halfway  to  the  station  the 
soft  blackness  of  the  night  broke  into  a  chill  drizzle  of 
spring  rain. 

And  after  all  the  train  was  late. 


§15 

"THERE'S  a  place  just  around  the  corner  where  we  can 
get  a  sandwich  and  hot  chocolate." 

Adam  Frear  had  come  up  beside  her  in  the  dark  and 
touched  her  lightly  on  the  arm.  Neith  yielded  to  the 
tacit  suggestion  of  private  withdrawal.  As  they  faced 
one  another  across  the  marble-topped  table  she  felt 
suddenly  cheerful  and  at  ease. 

"Hungry?"  Frear  scanned  the  well-thumbed  card. 

"Ravenous,  Casabianca,"  she  smiled  across. 

"Oh,  nothing  like  so  much  of  a  martyr.  More  like 
Brer  Rabbit  when  he  had  set  up  the  Tar  Baby  for  Brer 
Fox,  or  like  the  Tar  Baby,  perhaps.  Kendries  did  as  well 
with  my  speech  as  I  could  have  done  myself,"  he  finished 
to  her  slight  lift  of  inquiry. 

"You  don't  mean  to  say  — " 


72  NO.  26  JAYNE  STREET 

"Exactly  as  I  would  have  said  it  myself  if  the  police 
had  let  me.  And  as  the  morning  papers  will  report  it 
under  the  headlines  of  Free  Speech  denied." 

"I  think,"  said  Miss  Schuyler,  "that  I  begin  to  under 
stand  what  is  the  matter  with  my  Beloved  Country.  It's 
lack  of  imagination." 

"You  would  n't  call  the  Wool  worth  Building  unimag 
inative,  would  you?" 

"Never!  I  should  have  said,"  she  reconsidered,  "lack 
of  social  imagination.  I'm  always  in  a  state  of  perpetual 
wonderment  at  what  we  can  do  in  concrete  and  steel 
and  electricity.  But  when  it  comes  to  foreseeing  what 
people  will  think  and  do  .  .  . "  She  was  silent,  taking  the 
idea  seriously.  "That's  what  killed  my  father  .  .  .  the 
shock  of  seeing  Europe  do  the  unimagined  thing.  He  'd 
always  admired  the  Germans  extravagantly." 

"Harwood  told  me  something  of  what  you  had  been 
through." 

She  looked  up,  grateful  that  he  should  have  cared  to 
ask.  "We  were  too  slow  getting  out  of  Germany.  Father 
just  could  n't  believe.  After  Belgium  it  was  as  if  he  was 
always  trying  to  wake  up  from  a  nightmare,  but  he 
could  n't  in  this  life.  And  yet  we  'd  spent  most  of  ten 
years  in  Europe!  I  suppose  I  ought  n't  to  be  surprised  at 
the  police  keeping  you  out  of  that  meeting,  and  letting 
your  speech  in. 

"I  wish  I  had  listened  closer,"  she  went  on  while 
Adam  wrote  their  order  on  the  waiter's  pad.  "I  got  a 
wonderful  idea  of  the  spirit  of  the  strike  from  what  I 


NO.  26  JAYNE  STREET  73 

heard,  but  I  did  n't  find  out  what  exactly  they  expect 
to  gain  by  it." 

Frear  told  her. 

Neith  made  a  rapid  calculation.  "Just  about  what 
we're  spending  on  a  little  supper!  On  a  week's  work! 
I  suppose  I  ought  to  tell  you  —  My  family  are  large 
stockholders  in  the  mills.  I  happen  to  know  they  are 
making  about  sixty  per  cent." 

Frear  made  a  little  note. 

" That's  good,"  he  said;  "if  they  are  losing  as  much  as 
that  with  the  mills  closed,  they'll  be  the  more  anxious 
to  have  the  strike  over." 

The  arrival  of  the  steaming  cups  interposed  a  lighter 
interval,  but  Neith  pulled  the  subject  back. 

"What  I  don't  understand  is  their  not  seeing  over 
here  that  this  war  is  the  war  against  capitalism.  I  am 
sure  the  English  workers  see  it  that  way.  There  was  a 
time  when  they  did  n't  and  it  was  a  very  bad  time  for 
England  .  .  .  Capital  is  pretending  not  to  see  it,  but 
I'm  sure  they  do." 

"It's  different  over  here.  Wealth  has  always  had  a 
sense  of  obligation  over  there.  But  there 's  nothing  our    V 
people  resent  so  much  as  a  sense  of  obligation.  It's 
wealth  per  se  they  object  to." 

"I  wish—" 

Miss  Schuyler's  courage  failed  her  after  all.  She  had 
to  look  up  from  rolling  a  bread  crumb  to  catch  that  hot, 
blue  spark  of  his  eye  again,  and  that  sudden  effusion  of 
kindliness  which  was  the  greater  part  of  his  charm.  It 


74  NO.  26  JAYNE  STREET 

exhaled  from  him  like  perfume  from  a  shaken  vial.  One 
had  always  the  delightful  conviction  of  having  evoked  it 
from  him  on  one's  own  account. 

What  she  wished  was  that  he  would  tell  her,  in  so 
many  words,  what  he  thought  the  whole  business  would 
come  to.  She  had  an  idea  that  that  was  asking  too  much. 
And  the  spark  of  his  eye  told  her  that  nothing  would  be 
too  much  to  ask  at  that  moment.  The  air  was  suddenly 
charged  with  the  sense  of  immense  and  unutterable  in 
timacy.  Nevertheless  Adam  found  it  possible  to  go  on. 

"More  livingness  in  our  politics,  for  one  thing.  We 
must  get  rid  of  our  passion  for  permanence.  Imme 
diately  we  get  hold  of  something  that  answers  to  a  need, 
we  expend  an  enormous  lot  of  energy  trying  to  establish 
it  on  a  basis  that  will  preclude  our  getting  rid  of  it  as 
soon  as  the  need  has  passed.  You  women  are  the  worst 
at  that!"  Immediately  he  had  begun  to  say  that  which 
might  prove  offensive,  there  was  an  accession  of  that 
friendly  charm  of  his,  like  the  accentuated  perfume  of  a 
flower  at  the  fall  of  dusk.  Neith  understood  how  it  was 
that  he  had  been  so  successful  always  in  handling  people 
under  the  taboo  of  society. 

"Ah,"  she  gave  back,  "  I  have  always  been  afraid  of 
that.  It's  why  I  have  never  been  able  to  commit  myself 
to  Suffrage.  Madelon  Sherrod  says  it's  the  keepsake 
habit  of  women  that  keeps  them  in  bondage." 

"It's  the  fear  of  being  bound  that  keeps  many  men 
opposed  to  giving  women  political  privilege.  Men  have 
a  genius  for  experimentation."  He  corrected  himself. 


NO.  26  JAYNE  STREET  75 

"I'm  talking  of  men  as  Man.  Actually,  they  are  about 
as  guilty  as  women  when  it  comes  to  great  changes  such 
as  are  involved  in  this  war.  But  if  we  did  n't  take  change 
so  hard,  it  would  n't  take  us  so  hard."  He  settled  into 
the  easy  stride  of  the  practiced  speaker. 

"One  of  the  important  things  I  learned  when  I  began 
to  study  what  I  might  call  the  personnel  of  capitalism, 
was  that  we  are  not,  as  a  Nation,  really  fond  of  money. 
We  get,  as  individuals,  precious  little  out  of  it.  Perhaps 
there  is  not  much  to  be  got  for  the  individual  in  any 
case.  Our  richest  men  are  as  a  rule  men  of  simple 
tastes  and  habits.  But  they  cling  to  their  money,  and  to 
the  happy  hunting  ground  of  capitalism  as  a  field  in 
which  to  exercise  their  dominant  activities.  If  we  could 
make  them  understand  that  there  is  some  other  form  of 
society  in  which  they  could  still  have  full  scope  for  their 
talent  for  achievement,  we  'd  have  less  difficulty  in  per 
suading  them  to  accept  it." 

"Then  it  is  imagination  they  need.  Social  imagina 
tion."  She  was  wonderfully  beautified  for  the  moment 
by  the  modest  pleasure  of  feeling  that  she  had  met  him 
with  adequate  understanding;  she  the  novice,  and  he 
the  expert  marshal  of  men's  opinions.  No  doubt  she  gave 
him  credit  for  more  than  was  his  due,  but  she  was  much 
under  the  influence  of  the  evening's  episode.  It  was 
plain  that  to  the  Kendries,  to  Professor  Bartell  and 
others  of  their  group,  Adam  Frear  was  even  more  of  an 
outstanding  peak  than  her  father  had  esteemed  him. 

"You  know"  —  she  was  flushed  to  the  point  of  con- 


76  NO.  26  JAYNE  STREET 

fidence  —  "I've  begun  to  have  a  horrible  suspicion 
about  American  women  since  I  came  home.  One  hears 
so  much  abroad  about  how  progressive  they  are,  how 
they  are  taking  up  all  sorts  of  things.  But  my  suspicion 
is  that  they  are  not  new  things." 

"Yes?"  He  put  up  his  hand  to  stroke  his  fine  mus 
tache.  It  struck  Neith  that  this  was  an  habitual  gesture 
of  his  to  hide  a  secret  interest,  though  she  could  not 
trace  the  association  which  led  her  so  to  conclude.  The 
slight  inflection  of  eagerness  in  his  voice  merely  warmed 
her  to 'her  subject. 

"There's  Millicent  —  Mrs.  Bruce  Havens,  you  know; 
my  cousin.  She's  interested  in  playgrounds,  and  milk 
stations.  She  thinks  it's  new.  And  progressive.  But, 
after  all,  it  is  the  same  kind  of  thing  —  housekeeping 
kind  of  thing  —  women  have  always  been  doing. 

"And  the  Aunts  knit  for  the  Belgians.  Knitting!" 
A  vision  of  gray  wool  and  Doremas  emeralds  flitted  in 
her  smile.  "Aunt  Becky's  rings  must  be  worth  at  least 
forty  thousand  dollars,  and  she's  done  almost  two 
sweaters  since  Christmas.  You  don't  think  I  'm  cynical, 
do  you?" 

If  Adam  Frear  thought  so  he  concealed  it  admirably. 
He  suggested,  however,  that  there  were  women  who 
were  doing  things  that  could  be  rated  as  revolutionary. 

Neith  was  humble  instantly.  "Those  are  the  things  I 
must  know.  One  hears,  of  course,  about  such  women, 
but  one  doesn't  meet  them — "  Suddenly  afraid  she 
importuned  too  much,  she  veered  quickly.  "There's 


NO.  26  JAYNE  STREET  77 

Madelon,  of  course  .  .  .  Did  you  know  that  she's  leav 
ing  town?  On  tour.  Just  when  the  play  is  going  so  well." 
She  looked  into  her  cup  guardedly.  After  all,  it  was  n't 
for  her  to  advertise  Madelon's  troubles  if  they  were  not 
already  known.  She  caught  the  fleeting  tail  of  intelli 
gence  in  Adam  Frear's  eye  as  she  looked  up  again. 

"  Hershgeimer  is  to  manage  for  her." 

Frear  allowed  his  attention  to  be  abstracted  for  a 
moment  by  a  boy  with  the  late  evening  papers,  navi 
gating  between  the  marble-topped  islands  of  refresh 
ment.  He  was  about  to  slip  his  purchase  into  his  pocket 
after  a  brief  glance  at  the  head  lines,  when  his  eye  was 
caught  by  what  came  uppermost  as  he  folded  it.  After 
an  instant's  perusal  he  handed  it  over  to  Miss  Schuyler. 

"Ah!"  she  said,  and  "Ah  —  ha!"  as  she  scanned 
the  features  of  the  latest  Broadway  "lead."  "Madelon 
taught  her  everything  she  knows.  If  Julius  has  to  do 
that  sort  of  thing  —  I  suppose  you  know  he 's  doing  it 
on  Madelon's  money." 

Frear's  hand  went  up  to  his  mustache.  "I  thought 
Mrs.  Sherrod  would  be  rather  big  about  those  things." 

"It's  because  she's  the  biggest  woman  in  America,  in 
her  line,  that  she  should  n't  have  things  like  that  done 
to  her." 

Something  in  her  companion's  manner  suggested  to 
Neith  that  he  was  disconcerted  to  have  her  speak  of 
such  things.  In  Europe  everybody  did,  but  perhaps 
people  were  different  in  America.  She  felt  the  necessity 
for  explanation. 


78  NO.  26  JAYNE  STREET 

"There's  nothing  to  the  girl  but  youth  and  assurance, 
and,  of  course,  Madelon's  training.  She  brought  her 
with  her  to  Switzerland  the  last  time.  You  know,  Vera's 
father  was  killed  by  falling  scenery  while  he  was  playing 
in  one  of  Madelon's  companies.  Madelon  felt  it  her  duty 
rather  to  look  after  the  girl.  But  Vera  thought  she  had 
been  taken  up  on  her  own  account.  Madelon  didn't 
expect  much  of  her,  but  she  thought  that  with  three  or 
four  years'  hard  work  in  stock  —  And  now  Julius  is 
starring  her." 

"Women  are  n't  always  the  best  judges  of  women  . . ." 

Neith  gave  him  back  his  paper  with  a  tiny  cold  shiver 
of  antagonism  pricking  her  satisfaction. 

All  around  them  groups  and  couples  of  their  party,  who 
had  strayed  in  out  of  the  rain,  were  rising  hastily.  There 
was  a  general  rush  and  scramble  for  the  train.  Frear 
found  a  seat  for  her,  but  he  was  staying  on  with  Ken- 
dries,  he  told  her  at  the  last  moment,  and  in  the  general 
claim  on  his  attention  left  her  without  even  a  good-bye. 

Later  Neith  found  herself  accosted  somewhat  envi 
ously  by  the  little  teacher  from  Jersey  who  expected  to 
be  an  Intellectual. 

"You're  great  friends  with  Adam  Frear,  are  n't  you? 
He's  the  most  wonderful  man  we  have.  He's  very  rad 
ical.  Some  people  think  it  would  be  better  if  he  would 
make  more  of  a  point  of  his  radicalism.  Do  you  think 
it  would?  Or  do  you  agree  with  me  that  as  long  as  the 
Conservatives  act  the  way  they  do  it's  better  for  him 
not  to  antagonize  them?" 


NO.  26  JAYNE  STREET  79 

"I  should  be  disposed  to  think  that  whatever  Mr. 
Frear  thinks  the  best  way  for  him  to  work  is  the  best 
way." 

"Yes.  But  then  he  has  an  independent  income.  It's 
different  for  those  of  us  who  have  to  make  a  living,"  she 
sighed.  "  The  people  in  my  district  are  so  very  bourgeois. 
Do  you  know  Rose  Matlock?" 

So  that  was  Rose's  other  name.  Neith  admitted  hav 
ing  heard  of  her. 

"  She 's  grea  t  friends  with  Adam  Frear.  I  thought  you 
might  know  her,  too.  She's  quite  wonderful.  I  can  never 
make  up  my  mind  whether  she's  Radical  or  Conserva 
tive,  but  anyway  she's  wonderful." 

"Do  you  know,"  Neith  smiled,  "I  don't  yet  know 
your  name." 

"Sadie.  Sadie  Comyns.  I'm  part  Russian,  really.  And 
maybe  a  little  Jew.  But  of  course  I  don't  believe  any 
thing  now.  I'm  a  Syndicalist.  Hippolyte  is  three  quar 
ters  Russian.  The  Russians  are  such  wonderful  people, 
aren't  they?" 

§16 

Crossing  the  flaming  zodiac  of  Broadway  at  Thirty- 
Third  Street  —  she  had  dropped  most  of  her  party  at 
downtown  stations  —  Neith  was  touched  momentarily 
by  the  power  and  pride  of  cities. 

Crowds  of  people,  noisy  as  noon,  poured  along  the 
pavements  still  glistening  with  the  ram.  She  had  a 
splendid  sense  of  being  part  of  the  crowd,  even  in  the 


80  NO.  26  JAYNE  STREET 

isolation  of  her  cab.  She  remembered  the  short  laughs, 
the  vital  breaths  drawn  in  the  press  at  Marcy  as  the 
index  of  power,  the  power  of  common  purpose.  She  sung 
a  little  to  herself  as  she  consulted  her  watch,  considering 
whether  she  was  still  in  time  to  pick  up  Mrs.  Sherrod 
at  the  theater,  and  decided  to  go  straight  to  the  hotel. 

Turning  into  the  long  corridor  that  led  to  Mrs. 
Sherrod's  rooms,  she  saw  that  her  friend  was  before  her. 
Her  hand  was  at  the  door,  her  face  turned  in  invitation 
to  the  man  who  was  just  leaving  her  there.  Too  plainly 
he  meant  to  leave.  A  handsome  man  making  the  most 
of  what  was  left  of  his  handsomeness;  a  jocular  manner 
assumed  to  cover  his  pretense  of  not  seeing  what  Neith 
turned  away  her  eyes  to  avoid,  the  beautiful  yearning 
of  the  woman's  face,  the  invitation  of  the  half -opened 
door.  And  he  could  not  get  away  with  the  pretense. 

He  came  back.  All  at  once  the  woman  softened, 
flooded  incredibly  with  tenderness.  Just  for  that,  just 
for  his  not  being  able  to  pretend  that  things  could  ever 
be  as  casual  as  that  between  them! 

Neith  turned  aside  into  a  corridor.  Anything,  she  felt, 
would  be  better  than  admitting  to  Madelon  that  she. 
had  met  Julius  Sherrod  outside  her  door.  For  even 
Neith,  who  had  never  been  kissed,  understood  that  the 
kiss  asked  for  and  accorded,  had  been  cover  merely  for 
the  refusal  of  the  dearer  thing  that  might  now  never  be 
given  at  all. 


BOOK  II 


VI 

§17    ;     '     :  I 

IN  the  business  of  settKng  in  Jayne  Street,  in  the  very 
midst  of  this  unfamiliar  and  importunate  present,  two 
very  touching  and  tender  experiences  shaped  for  Neith. 

She  had  been  there  only  long  enough  to  be  conscious 
of  it  as  the  place  to  come  back  to  from  an  excursion  into 
the  city,  when  she  began  to  be  beautifully  aware  of  a 
renewal  of  continuity  in  that  gay  and  affectionate  inti 
macy  with  her  father,  which  had  been  the  most  forma 
tive  influence  of  her  life.  It  rose  to  her  like  a  delicate 
fragrance  out  of  Delia  Robbia  garlands  and  Roman 
candlesticks,  was  shaken  from  fragments  of  old  em 
broideries,  long-stored  treasures  of  the  sort  that  can  still 
be  picked  up  in  Europe  by  people  of  discriminating 
taste  and  a  selective  narrowness  of  means. 

Thus  far  her  father's  identity  had  seemed  to  her  ut 
terly  swallowed  up  in  the  immensities  of  war,  cut  off  as  a 
limb  is  cut  off  in  amputation.  There  had  been  an  aching 
numbness  in  the  faculty  of  affection,  and  at  night  dreams 
of  rehabilitation  of  the  severed  member,  ending  in 
shocked  realizations  of  loss.  Free-flowing  grief,  such  as 
might  have  restored  her  to  the  natural  sense  of  his  still 
going  on  in  some  other  and  not  too  distant  place,  'made 
her  ashamed.  How  could  one  weep  when  all  were  in 
such  need  of  tears !  Now  as  memory  rose  upon  her  out  of 


84  NO.  26  JAYNE  STREET 

all  these  visible  associations  of  their  life  together,  she 
would  lean  her  head  against  the  chest  from  which  she 
had  just  unwrapped  them,  and  cry  quietly  with  great 
recovery  of  the  livingness  of  affection. 

She  would  find  herself  talking  to  him  audibly  as  she 
moved  about  her  rooms  disposing  of  the  lovely  acces 
sories  of  furnishing,  collected  in  anticipation  of  a  settled 
home  in  some  such  environment,  for  that  personal  study 
of  America  which  they  had  pleased  themselves  with  im 
agining  they  would  make.  To  know  and  to  understand 
their  native  land  had  been  a  sort  of  delightful  expiation 
of  their  long  absence  from  it. 

"Now  you  have  come  back  to  me,  my  dear,"  she 
would  say  to  the  presence  which  filled  the  Jayne  Street 
rooms  with  warmth,  "you  must  never  leave  me.  With 
out  you  I  shan't  be  in  the  least  able  to  understand 
it." 

The  morning  after  the  visit  to  Marcy,  she  cut  out  the 
quotations  from  Adam  Frear's  speech  as  Kendries  had 
delivered  it,  and,  as  Frear  himself  had  predicted,  it  was 
published  in  the  morning  papers. 

"But  you  must  remember  that  all  the  Democracy 
you  are  ever  going  to  have,  is  the  amount  you  can 
deliver  ..." 

As  she  pasted  this  inside  the  lid  of  her  writing-desk, 
she  had  almost  the  feeling  that  her  father  had  com 
mitted  her  to  the  leadership  of  Adam  Frear's  mind  as 
the  one  American  of  whom  he  felt  most  hopeful. 


NO.  26  JAYNE  STREET  85 

§18 

It  was  not  until  the  furnishing  of  her  rooms  was  prac 
tically  complete  and  had  begun  to  reflect  a  subtle  color 
of  her  personality,  that  the  other  experience  unfolded 
itself  about  her  like  a  delicate  veil. 

She  was  much  alone  the  first  three  or  four  weeks. 
Madelon  Sherrod  was  still  on  tour  and  Adam  Frear 
away  in  the  West  on  one  of  those  inexplicable  errands 
of  opinion-making  which  occupied  his  time. 

Neith  yielded  to  a  half-conscious  prompting  not  to 
initiate  her  social  life  in  the  new  environment  without 
one  or  the  other  of  the  two  friends  who  had  some  con 
nection  with  her  past.  She  sat  quietly  in  her  rooms  and 
began  to  weave  the  thoughts  of  her  friends  and  her 
father,  the  past  into  the  future. 

As  if  it  had  waited  at  the  door  of  imagination  for  the 
timid  knock  of  suggestion,  there  began  to  flow  into  the 
Jayne  Street  rooms  out  of  the  train  of  associations  thus 
set  in  motion,  one  of  those  girlhood  dreams  that  in 
good  women  lie  so  close  to  the  house-making  instinct 
that  one  can  scarcely  be  stirred  without  waking  over 
tones  of  the  other. 

During  a  period  of  more  than  ordinary  depression  in 
her  father's  semi-invalid  life,  Neith  had  spent  the  season 
that  should  have  been  filled  with  flirting  and  dancing 
and  gay  preoccupations,  drifting  about  the  Florentine 
galleries,  growing  Madonna-eyed  herself  in  the  presence 
of  so  many  glorified  young  mothers,  companioned  at 


86  NO.  26  JAYNE  STREET 

last  by  small  shapes  such  as  flock  like  doves  to  their 
proper  cotes  about  the  flowering  souls  of  young  woman 
hood.  They  would  wait  for  her  in  the  shadowy  rooms  of 
great  palaces,  or  she  would  find  them  playing  about  the 
fountains  in  the  cool  morning  gardens.  There  were  two 
in  particular  who  ran  at  her  side  and  slipped,  almost 
with  the  touch  of  reality,  their  small  hands  into  hers,  a 
boy  with  soft  dark  hair  and  eyes  of  deep  blue,  pricked 
even  in  her  fancy  of  him  with  a  tingling  intimacy,  and 
a  younger,  rosier  sister. 

Far  below  consciousness  there  must  be  in  women  an 
instinct  creating  semblances  for  the  young  souls  that 
may  bud  from  their  bosoms.  As  the  two  came  back  to  her 
in  Jayne  Street,  Neith  had  a  sense  of  their  having  been 
called  there  by  a  summoning  instinct  working  far  in  ad 
vance  of  experience.  Not  to  disturb  them,  she  kept  her 
house  to  herself  and  spent  long  hours  there,  half  busy 
with  a  piece  of  needlework  and  full  of  a  vague  tender 
brooding.  Years  afterward  she  was  to  be  grateful  for  this 
visitation  and  to  find  in  it  almost  the  sole  assurance  of 
the  veracity  of  the  convictions  that  shaped  that  year's 
experience. 

In  the  meantime  the  whole  country  moved  steadily 
toward  war,  and  her  cousin  by  marriage,  twice  removed, 
Eustace  Rittenhouse,  fell  in  love  with  her. 


Millicent  was  directly  responsible.  Millicent  was  giv 
ing  Eustace  a  dinner,  and  Millicent,  like  all  happily  mar- 


NO.  26  JAYNE  STREET  87 

ried  women,  wishing  everybody  the  same  state,  was 
suddenly  struck  by  the  possibilities  latent  in  the  meeting 
of  two  handsome  young  people  who  already  have  reasons 
to  think  well  of  one  another. 

Young  Eustace  and  her  cousin  had  known  one  an 
other  as  children,  but  the  last  and  only  occasion  of  their 
meeting  as  grown-ups  had  been  when  Bruce  had  cabled 
to  Lieutenant  Rittenhouse  to  go  down  to  the  obscure 
village  in  Southern  France  where  he  had  died  and 
help  Neith  bury  her  father.  Millicent  had  forgotten 
this  until  she  saw  the  recollection  flash  up  between 
them  as  they  met  at  her  hearth,  and  the  swift  mutual- 
ness  with  which  they  laid  the  common  memory  aside 
in  deference  to  her  hospitality. 

Millicent  had  the  loveliest  of  intuitions  in  respect  to 
things  within  her  experience,  and  people  in  her  class. 
She  remembered  the  impression  Neith's  contained  and 
quiet  grief  had  made  on  young  Rittenhouse  as  he  had 
afterward  written  her,  and  appreciated  the  pleasant 
start  with  which  he  identified  her  in  a  social  role.  Neith, 
in  Millicent's  rooms  and  a  made-over  apricot  satin  of 
Aunt  Doremas's,  looked  to  be  the  expensive,  hand-grown 
product  that  the  American  man  likes  to  think  himself 
responsible  for. 

Aunt  Doremas,  who  liked  nothing  better  than  seeing 
other  people  made  splendid  by  her  economies,  had  been 
largely  placated  over  the  Jayne  Street  affair  by  Neith's 
acceptance  of  the  dress,  and  Aunt  Emmy's  dressmaker 
had  made  it  up  for  her  after  an  illustration  in  Vogue. 


88  NO.  26  JAYNE  STREET 

Neith  had  demurred  at  first  and  then  relented.  After  all, 
she  had  reflected,  looking  like  an  illustration  in  Vogue 
is  one  phase  of  Americanization. 

As  she  stood  on  a  white  rug  in  front  of  Millicent's  fire 
she  seemed  as  if  she  might  have  stepped  from  it,  all  rosy' 
net  and  flashes  of  silver  and  flame-colored  satin.  Her 
face,  touched  with  the  glow  and  the  warm  quality  of  her 
welcome  for  Eustace,  for  the  once  had  the  meaning 
and  the  spark  that  many  people  found  wanting  in  it. 
Millicent,  watching  as  Lieutenant  Rittenhouse,  with  all 
his  medals  aswing  across  his  breast,  and  distinctly  un 
aware  that  he  wanted  to  be  married,  crossed  the  room  to 
shake  hands  with  her,  excused  herself  instantly  after  to 
go  and  make  some  changes  in  her  table  arrangements 
to  bring  the  young  people  next  to  one  another.  Neith, 
feeling  for  some  recognition  of  their  last  meeting  which 
should  not  impinge  too  pointedly  on  Eustace's  occasion 
as  the  distinguished  guest,  had  the  happiest  instinct 
just  to  run  the  tips  of  her  fingers,  as  one  touches  a 
familiar  instrument,  lightly  across  the  medals  on  his 
breast. 

Suddenly  there  were  all  the  heroic  realities  of  the  past 
three  years  between  them.  What  Eustace  particularly 
liked  was  her  not  speaking  of  them.  He  continued  to 
look  down  at  her  as  she  looked  up  at  him  with  a  con 
tented  sense  of  her  being  allied  with  him  against  the  pos 
sibilities  of  Millicent's  other  guests  wanting  to  know,  as 
Americans  so  often  did,  how  he  came  by  his  honors. 

Young  Rittenhouse  was  dark,  with  rather  deep-set 


NO.  26  JAYNE  STREET  89 

eyes  in  a  round,  close-cropped  head,  the  mechanician's 
head,  with  the  slight  cast  forward  of  the  head  and  shoul 
ders  which  gave  him  the  eagle  look,  the  mark  of  his  pro 
fession  of  aviation.  He  was  not  much  over  thirty,  a  taut 
slenderness  crammed  full  of  the  consciousness  of  all  the 
young  men's  world  pressing  from  behind,  about  to  break 
into  step  with  him.  Rittenhouse  had  been  summoned 
home  by  Washington,  and  knew  much  more  than  he 
dared  to  talk  about.  Neith's  quick  and  instinctive  mo 
tion  of  sharing  with  him  all  these  inexpressible  certain 
ties,  created  a  point  of  contact  at  which  his  pent-up 
excitement  discharged  in  a  kind  of  boyish  gayety.  It  did 
not  occur  to  him  that  her  quick  response  was  part  of  a 
technique,  learned  in  the  service  of  Rest  Rooms  in  Eng 
land  and  France,  so  perfect  that  it  had  become  almost 
automatic. 

§20 

Millicent's  dinner,  on  the  whole,  went  off  pleasantly. 

There  was  an  ex-Senator  from  Idaho  or  Montana,  and 
his  wife,  who  found  New  York  the  only  possible  place  in 
which  to  invest  the  accumulated  social  and  financial 
capital  accumulated  during  twelve  years  in  Washing 
ton  ;  there  was  a  Naval  Reserve  officer  who  resented  all 
comment  on  military  affairs  as  an  infringement  on  his 
field;  and  several  young  married,  or  about  to  be  mar 
ried,  pairs  of  about  the  same  quality  and  status  as  their 
hosts. 

As  it  turned  out,  nobody,  with  the  exception  of  one  of 


90  NO.  26  JAYNE  STKEET 

the  youngest  of  the  unmarried  women,  was  in  the  least 
interested  in  Eustace's  medals,  and  the  Senator  told  him 
a  great  many  things  about  American  aviation  for  which 
Eustace  did  his  best  to  appear  grateful.  The  Senator  was 
of  the  opinion  that  aviation  had  been  allowed  to  go  on  in 
America  chiefly  as  the  happy  experiment  of  young,  and 
not  always  expedient,  men,  but  that  once  the  "business 
sense  of  the  country  "  took  hold  of  it,  you  would  see  what 
you  would  see.  All  of  which  was  dependent  on  whether 
the  President  had  or  had  not  done  wisely  thus  far.  Eus 
tace  alone  was  guardedly  explicit  on  what  the  President 
had  not  done. 

"He  had  to  wait,"  the  Senator  explained,  "until  he 
had  the  country  behind  him." 

"The  people  were  n't  ready  for  war,"  insisted  one  of 
the  married  men.  He  was  a  stock  broker  himself  and  his 
knowledge  of  the  country  was  largely  confined  to  the 
headlines  of  the  daily  paper  and  the  stock  report. 

"I  know  the  army  is  n't,"  Eustace  allowed  himself. 

The  Naval  Reserve  officer  implied  that,  of  course, 
Eustace  could  n't  know. 

Bruce  Havens  admitted  that  Roosevelt  had  been  right 
in  that  point,  at  least,  but  it  was  the  general  impression 
of  the  company  that  Roosevelt  would  n't  have  had  the 
country  behind  him. 

"I  had  somehow  got  the  impression,"  Miss  Schuyler 
ventured,  "that  the  country,  the  Labor  element  at 
least,  is  n't  behind  him." 

"Oh,  Labor!'9  said  the  ex-Senator. 


NO.  26  JAYNE  STREET  91 

The  young  husband  was  convinced  that  once  the 
country  got  under  military  control  they  'd  show  Labor. 

"Anyway,  the  women  are!"  Millicent  was  sure  with 
the  sureness  of  a  member  of  the  Red  Cross,  actively 
interested  in  Belgian  relief. 

"Oh,  I  don't  know,"  the  young  wife  demurred.  "We 
never  can  get  anybody  to  come  to  our  Chapter  unless 
there's  bridge."  And  then,  feeling  she  had  hardly  done 
her  circle  justice,  "I  must  say,  though,  that  there  have 
been  some  mighty  erratic  hands  at  bridge  this  winter." 

"We  gave  a  bazaar  for  the  Belgiums  at  Sandy  Grit," 
cheerfully  supplied  Mrs.  Senator,  "and  when  we  got 
through  the  Belgiums  owed  us  five  thousand  dollars." 

But  on  the  whole  it  was  agreed  that  when  the  pinch 
came,  the  country  would  get  behind  Mr.  Wilson. 

There  was  a  general  disposition  to  fall  back  on  the 
quality  of  American  efficiency  for  defense,  though  the 
Senator  issued  a  warning  against  the  over-indulgence  in 
"experts"  as  opposed  to  that  business  sense  which  he 
himself  so  amply  illustrated.  What  was  wanted  was  pro 
duction,  not  theory.  As  for  the  submarines,  let  the  in 
ventors  get  together  and  invent  something. 

The  party  broke  up  early  in  order  that  the  Senator 
might  get  an  early  train  to  Washington.  Eustace  and 
Neith  were  taken  away  in  the  Havens's  own  car  by  the 
stock  broker  and  his  wife.  As  they  rolled  toward  the 
white-light  district,  Eustace  urged  his  long  deprivation 
as  an  excuse  for  a  turn  at  some  place  where  there  was 
dancing.  Expansively  assuming  the  host,  the  young  hus- 


92  NO.  26  JAYNE  STREET 

band  proposed  one  of  those  places  west  of  Broadway 
where  visitors  are  supposed  to  participate  harmlessly  in 
the  vices  of  the  Metropolis. 

"Well,"  the  young  wife  conceded,  "I  suppose  we  are 
perfectly  safe  not  to  meet  anybody  we  know." 

Eustace  and  Neith  took  a  turn  about  the  morbid  bril 
liance  of  the  dancing  space,  circled  by  extravagantly 
feathered  birds  drinking  and  feeding  themselves  into 
a  simulcrum  of  that  Paradise  Lost  of  simple  human 
delight. 

"Back  me  up,"  whispered  Eustace,  "and  I'll  have 
you  out  of  this  in  no  time." 

Probably  nothing  encourages  the  growth  of  diplo 
macy  in  young  men  like  the  determination  to  find  occa 
sion  for  being  alone  with  attractive  young  women.  In  ten 
minutes  Lieutenant  Rittenhouse  had  handed  their  host 
and  his  wife  into  their  car  under  the  impression  that 
they  had  conferred  a  welcome  evening  of  gayety  on  the 
representative  of  American  gallantry.  Three  minutes 
later  said  representative  was  speeding  down  Seventh  in 
a  taxicab  beside  a  symphony  in  apricot  and  silver  and 
rose. 

"I  hate  to  rob  you  of  all  that  swellness,"  he  suggested 
appreciatively,  "but  just  how  long  will  it  take  you  to 
get  into  something  plain  and  dark?" 

Neith  considered  the  negotiation  of  those  four  hooks 
in  the  middle  of  the  back,  and  said  fifteen  minutes.  She 
found,  however,  when  she  issued  from  her  bedroom  at 
the  end  of  that  time,  that  it  required  some  minutes  more 


NO.  26  JAYNE  STREET  93 

to  detach  Eustace  from  rapturous  contemplation  of  her 
two  living-rooms. 

The  hideous  "graining"  of  a  previous  occupancy  had 
been  painted  ivory  white,  and  the  walls,  covered  with 
warm  gray,  matched  by  an  unpatterned  gray  rug.  Across 
the  windows,  which  were  recessed,  Neith  had  drawn 
thin  curtains  of  persimmon-colored  silk.  For  the  rest  it 
was  all  old  mahogany  and  Italian  rep  with  vivid  notes 
of  European  occupation. 

"You  can't  imagine,"  said  Eustace,  "how  war  makes 
you  forget  things  like  these  and  yet  makes  you  think  all 
the  more  of  them." 

He  struggled  awhile  with  the  usual  American  lack  of 
success  in  the  subtilties  of  personal  emotion  and  gave  it 
up.  "Now,"  he  announced,  "we  will  dance!'9 

§21 

At  the  Grand  Central  Palace,  where  he  presently 
landed  her,  Neith  had  an  impression  of  noble  bulk, 
of  mysteriously  lighted  arches  and  infinite  beading  of 
lamps  such  as  no  palace  of  her  acquaintance  gave  her 
the  figure  for,  and  then  of  a  bright  acreage  of  dancing 
floor  cut  off  by  a  simple,  and  on  the  whole  tasteful,  ar 
rangement  of  bamboo  and  an  infinitude  of  small  tables. 
Quick,  swinging  music  issued  fountain-wise  from  an 
island  of  artificial  palms  in  the  midst  of  the  dancing 
space,  in  regular  two-minute  jets.  In  the  intervals  "soft 
drinks"  and  the  free  search  for  partners  took  place 
among  the  tables.  It  seemed,  in  its  simplicity,  the  freest 


94  NO.  26  JAYNE  STREET 

place  imaginable,  until  one  caught  sight  of  the  placards 
announcing  that  gentlemen  were  not  expected  to  invite 
ladies  to  dance  until  they  had  been  introduced  by  the 
official  chaperon. 

"But  fancy"  —  Neith  was  only  half  convinced  — 
"regulating  social  intercourse  by  placards!" 

You  could  n't,  Eustace  insisted,  except  where  there 
was  a  habit  of  self -regulation  to  begin  with.  Most  of  the 
dancers  were  self-supporting,  he  told  her;  ribbon  clerks, 
and  stenographers,  assistant  accountants,  two-stepping 
with  their  fiancees. 

They  had  a  two-step  themselves  and  then  a  waltz. 
Finally  Eustace  essayed  to  teach  her  the  fox  trot.  He 
danced  as  might  be  expected  of  a  man  whose  life  from 
moment  to  moment  depended  on  the  perfect  poise  and 
handling  of  his  body.  Neith  yielded  herself  to  his  guid 
ance  and  a  native  sense  of  rhythm. 

All  her  attention  was  for  the  place,  its  sights  and  sa 
vors,  the  decorum,  the  absorbed  individualism  of  the 
couples  dancing  by  themselves.  Here  and  there  were 
parties  taking  their  enjoyment  with  almost  the  freedom 
and  isolation  of  a  home  entertainment.  There  was  so 
much  going  on  among  the  three  or  four  hundred  patrons 
of  the  place  that  nothing  was  singled  out,  and  it  was  not 
until  she  heard  Eustace  calling  to  them  over  her  shoul 
der,  that  she  was  aware  of  the  entrance  of  other  of  her 
acquaintances. 

"Hello,  Lute!" 

"Eustace  —  Rittenhouse!  Of  all  people!" 


NO.  26  JAYNE  STREET  95 

So  it  was  the  Dunhams  of  Stamford,  after  all!  Then 
under  the  pleasant  start  of  discovery,  Neith  suffered  an 
odd  pang.  Behind  the  Kendries  and  Fleeta  and  Van 
Harwood,  she  discovered  Adam  Frear. 

Eustace  had  to  be  introduced  to  him,  and  to  Fleeta, 
and  almost  immediately  Harwood  swung  her  away  into 
the  skipping  measure  of  "Katie,  Katie." 

"Do  you  come  here  often?"  Neith  wished  to  know. 

"  When  I  am  in  New  York.  It  is  the  only  place  where 
you  can  get  dancing  for  dancing's  sake."  So  they  skipped 
for  its  own  sake,  and  Neith  kept  her  questions  for  a  less 
importunate  occasion. 

Then  Direck  Kendries  took  her  around  once,  and 
Eustace  claimed  another  waltz  before  she  discovered 
that  Adam  Frear  was  not  dancing  at  all.  He  occupied 
himself  with  ordering  grape  juice  and  ginger  ale  for  all  of 
them  as  he  could  catch  them  between  dances.  On  the 
plea  that  she  had  been  dancing  some  time  before  the 
others  arrived,  Neith  decided  to  sit  out  with  him.  This 
left  Van  Harwood  temporarily  without  a  partner.  He 
insisted  on  hunting  up  one  of  the  official  chaperons  and 
being  introduced  to  a  young  woman  who  turned  out  to 
be  a  filing  clerk  in  the  City  Hall,  and,  so  Van  Harwood 
averred  on  his  return,  chewed  her  gum  like  a  perfect 
lady. 

"The  most  remarkable  thing  I  have  discovered  in 
New  York,"  Neith  found  herself  saying  to  Adam  Frear; 
"is  it  under  the  auspices  of  —  anybody?" 

"Auspices!"  exclaimed  Mrs.  Kendries,  getting  up  to 


96  NO.  26  JAYNE  STREET 

dance  with  the  indefatigable  Eustace,  "it's  common 
consent  I  Common  victims  one  might  say.  Nobody's 
house  in  New  York  is  big  enough  to  dance  in.  This  is  a 
Communal  Parlor." 

"It's  what  everything  has  to  be,  to  be  of  any  real 
value,"  put  in  her  husband.  "A  business  proposition. 
It  pays  for  itself  out  of  its  own  excuse  for  existence." 

"It's  Socialism,"  Mrs.  Kendries  insisted. 

"Oh,  can  the  sociology,  Lute!  This  is  a  party." 
Eustace  took  her  bodily  away. 

Turning  back  from  watching  their  skillful  flight  across 
the  floor,  Neith  found  her  interest  in  them  occluded  by 
that  electric-blue  gaze  of  Adam  Frear's  which  had  the 
effect  always  of  creating  its  own  milieu,  in  an  atmosphere 
at  once  impersonal  and  intimate. 

He  had  just  come,  he  said,  with  the  effect  of  continu 
ing  an  interrupted  confidence,  from  a  meeting  where  he 
could  have  wished  her  to  be  present,  but  there  had  not 
been  time  between  that  and  the  arrival  of  his  train  — 
So  he  had  meant  to  let  her  know!  How,  he  interestedly 
inquired,  had  the  great  quest  been  progressing? 

"Oh  —  I've  been  house  furnishing.  But  I've  learned 
something  even  from  that.  The  extraordinary  things 
there  are  to  buy  in  New  York,  and  the  things  one 
can't  buy!  The  miles  and  miles  I  have  walked  trying 
to  find  something  that  is  n't  in  the  mode  of  the  mo 
ment.  I  could  n't  have  imagined  such  a  passion  for 
alikeness." 

"Ah,  that's  it!  The  phrase  I  wanted."  He  smiled  his 


NO.  26  JAYNE  STREET  97 

thanks.  "That's  the  trouble  with  the  Middle  West  about 
the  war." 

"They're  coming  in,  are  n't  they?" 

"As  soon  as  they  can  be  sure  of  coming  all  together." 

"But  their  leaders  —  who  are  the  leaders  of  the  Mid 
dle  West?" 

"It  is  n't  leaders  that  are  wanted  in  America.  Leaders 
are  a  denial  of  the  doctrine  that  every  man's  opinion  is 
as  good  as  any  other  man's.  That  is  as  far  as  we  get  in 
Democracy,"  he  explained.  "We  have  leaders  in  finance, 
we  have  leaders  in  organized  politics,  but  when  it  comes 
to  opinion  —  I  suppose  there  is  no  country  in  the  world 
that  has  as  little  use  for  leaders  in  opinion ! "  There  was 
something  less  than  the  customary  easy  detachment  in 
his  tone.  She  supposed  that  he  might  have  met  some 
check,  himself. 

He  looked  tired,  and  she  unconsciously  felt  for  a 
lighter,  relieving  touch.  She  looked  across  where  Direck 
Kendries  was  dancing  with  his  wife,  with  a  happy  grav 
ity  and  downright  ness  that  suggested  the  peasant  strain 
that  Madelon  Sherrod's  account  of  him  had  led  her  to 
suspect. 

"I  am  often  seeing  things  like  that,"  she  explained  in 
her  turn,  "things  that  in  Europe  one  recognizes  as  the 
root  of  race  feeling  and  —  and  nationality.  What  you 
say  you  have  n't  arrived  at  here.  Well,  what  do  you  do 
with  it?" 

"Oh,  in  Kendries's  part  of  the  country  we've  made 
the  Non-Partisan  League  of  it." 


98  NO.  26  JAYNE  STREET 

"You  mean"  —  she  puzzled  it  out  —  "that  political 
ferment  in  America  is  simply  the  working-out  of  some 
thing  that  in  Europe  finds  its  expression  in  —  what,  in 
a  general  way,  is  called  art?" 

"Say  a  new  art  of  communal  expression.  But  art  im 
plies  a  community  of  ideas  to  be  communicated.  Opin 
ion  in  the  Middle  West  is  like  this  "  —  he  indicated  the 
whirling  hundreds  —  "everybody  dancing  his  own  idea 
to  the  same  music.  Only  just  now  they  are  waiting  for 
the  music.  Presently  somebody  at  Washington  will  strike 
up  the  'Star-Spangled  Banner'" —  The  orchestra  be 
hind  them  struck  it  up  just  then  and  they  rose  with  the 
others. 

During  the  momentary  silence  Adam  Frear's  eyes 
rested  on  her  with  quiet  appreciation.  The  dress  she  had 
put  on  at  Eustace's  suggestion  was  dark  blue  and  simply 
made.  Here  and  there  were  little  touches  of  colored  em 
broidery  placed  with  French  expertness,  which  knows 
so  well  how  to  create  the  effect  of  feminine  intricacy  with 
the  utmost  economy  of  means.  Her  hat  was  a  close 
toque,  trimmed  with  clusters  of  little  velvet  wings.  Sit 
ting  down  again  she  found  him  in  the  chair  nearest  to 
hers.  They  sat  through  the  next  number  in  a  sort  of 
possessive  silence  each  of  each,  a  silence  which  Miss 
Schuyler  had  from  moment  to  moment  surface  impulses 
to  break,  impulses  that  lapsed  in  half-articulate  sound 
against  the  protecting  wall  of  music.  At  the  end  of  that 
dance  the  rest  of  their  party  came  back  ready  for  re 
freshment. 


NO.  26  JAYNE  STREET  99 

"What  I  want  to  know,"  said  Fleeta,  "is  why  soldiers 
turn  to  dancing  for  recreation.  You'd  think  they  would 
go  in  for  less  strenuous  amusement." 

There  were  a  surprising  number  of  uniforms  on  the 
floor,  considering  that  the  country  was  not  yet  in  arms. 
Half  a  dozen  French  sailors  had  come  in  under  convoy 
of  as  many  U.S.  Navy  men. 

"Well,  you  can't  think  when  you  dance,"  Kendries 
suggested. 

Harwood  loudly  disagreed  with  him.  "It  is  because 
the  habit  of  living  in  hourly  sight  of  sudden  death  brings 
them  back  to  fundamentals." 

"But,  dancing  — "  Fleeta  began. 

"It's  art,"  the  war  correspondent  insisted.  "A  low 
form  of  it,  but  the  only  art  the  average  man  has  any 
skill  in.  It's  sex,  too,"  he  added,  watching  the  whirling 
pairs.  "And  what's  more  fundamental  than  that?" 

Fleeta  was  instantly  diverted.  "Rose  Matlock  says 
that  all  the  sex  phenomena  that  arise  in  war  are  mani 
festations  of  the  sudden  rush  of  life  to  preserve  itself  in 
the  face  of  imminent  catastrophe." 

Kendries,  who  had  been  across  twice  on  Labor  Com 
missions,  expressed  himself  freely  on  things  he  had 
observed  in  the  streets  of  London  and  Paris. 

Neith  was  always  being  astounded  at  the  way  these 
things  were  discussed  in  America.  In  Europe  it  was  per 
missible  to  admit  a  grand  passion  to  the  conversation. 
She  had  seen  all  Paris  turn  out  to  grand  opera  on  the 
mere  rumor  of  a  new  liaison  of  the  prima  donna's,  expect- 


100  NO.  26  JAYNE  STREET 

ing  a  new  savor  in  her  art.  But  in  America  prima  donnas 
were  supposed  to  be  virtuous,  and  quite  decent  people 
talked  unreservedly  of  Complexes  and  the  Social  Evil. 

She  was  pleased  with  Eustace  for  the  turn  he  was  able 
to  give  to  the  present  discussion. 

"Soldiers  like  dancing,"  he  declared,  "because  it  is 
movement  to  music;  it's  the  easiest  way  for  a  man  to 
get  himself  together.  To  succeed  in  war,  a  man  must  be 
all  there,  especially  in  the  Air  Service." 

"We're  going  to  have  three  bands  for  the  Peace  Dem 
onstration  in  Washington,"  Fleeta  confirmed  cheer 
fully. 

"Which  makes  it  obligatory  for  me  to  teach  you 
something  more  about  keeping  time,"  said  the  aviator, 
whisking  her  to  the  floor  with  the  admonition  that  the 
place  would  close  in  fifteen  minutes. 

|  22 

At  ten  minutes  past  twelve  they  all  walked  over  to 
Fifth  Avenue  and  rode  down  on  top  of  the  bus,  drop 
ping  Adam  Frear  at  Twenty-Sixth  and  the  Kendries  at 
Eleventh.  There  was  a  lopsided  medal  of  pale  gold  peer 
ing  at  them  between  the  high  stark  cliffs  of  the  buildings. 
Going  along  Waverley  Place,  Fleeta  and  Van  Harwood 
took  the  opposite  side  of  the  street.  Neith  discovered 
that  Eustace  was  holding  the  ungloved  hand  he  had 
pulled  through  his  arm  as  they  got  down  from  the  bus. 
It  was  just  so  he  had  walked  back  with  her  from  the  little 
cemetery  in  Provence  where  they  had  buried  her  father, 


NO.  26  JAYNE  STREET  101 

but  the  swinging  rhythm  of  the  dance  was  still  in  their 
walk. 

Although  he  had  not  yet  discovered  what  had  hap 
pened  to  him,  Eustace  had  a  good  deal  of  difficulty  in 
parting  from  her  at  Twenty-Six  Jayne  Street. 

"It  has  been  a  perfectly  bully  evening,  has  n't  it?" 

"Oh  — bully!" 

"I'll  pick  you  up  to-morrow  about  six  —  if  you  don't 
mind.  We  '11  have  dinner  at  a  place  I  know,  and  a  show 
afterward  if  you  have  n't  anything  on."  She  had  n't 
any  engagement,  and  she  had  heard  there  were  some 
good  shows.  She  liked  going  about  to  different  cafes  and 
seeing  New  York.  And  at  last  she  had  to  go  in  and  leave 
him  there. 

She  turned  on  all  the  lights  and  looked  at  her  rooms 
with  a  critical  eye.  They  were  really  charming,  consid 
ering!  After  all,  why  should  she  wait  for  Madelon  before 
inviting  her  friends  in.  She  would  begin  with  something 
informal,  say  a  Sunday  afternoon,  and  a  few  of  the  most 
intimate  guests  kept  to  such  a  little  supper  as  she  had  so 
often  managed  for  her  father's  friends. 

For  the  first  time  since  she  had  settled  there,  as  Neith 
fell  asleep,  it  was  the  future  and  not  the  past  that 
claimed  her.  While  she  had  been  dancing  with  Eustace 
all  the  little  ghosts  had  slipped  away. 

And  then  after  a  quarter  of  an  hour's  sleep,  suddenly 
she  awoke.  She  was  caught  back  for  an  instant  with  the 
singular  conviction  of  hearing  her  name  called  importu 
nately.  The  impression  was  gone  as  mysteriously  as  it 


102  .NO.  26  JAYNE  STREET 

came,  but  as  she  slipped  back  into  slumber  as  a  swimmer 
yields  his  body  to  the  water,  she  was  struck  with  the 
notion  that  whoever  had  called  her  had  blue  eyes. 


VII 

§23 

THE  next  evening  Eustace  took  her  to  dinner  at  one  of 
the  few  places  where  French  cooking  can  still  be  had  in 
New  York.  It  is  located  not  far  from  the  Square  on  a 
by-street,  and  can  be  recognized  by  the  foreign-looking 
gentlemen  —  French  cavalrymen  come  to  buy  ammuni 
tion  mules,  Russian  financiers  and  Swiss  commission 
agents  who  might  so  easily  have  been  German  spies  — 
who  can  be  seen  at  the  windows  of  the  coffee  room  play 
ing  backgammon  and  ecarte.  The  dinner  was  excellent, 
though  in  respect  to  the  polyglot  patronage  of  the  place 
there  was  an  inconsiderable  amount  of  standing  up  to 
fnational  airs.  Eustace  was  of  the  opinion  that  the  first 
/  fruits  of  Internationalism  would  be  a  single  international 
j  hymn  for  the  convenience  of  eating-places. 

They  did  not,  however,  go  to  the  theater.  It  was  too 
late  for  any  of  the  Broadway  houses  when  they  thought 
of  it.  They  went  back  to  Neith's  rooms  and  kindled  a 
fire  under  the  white  marble  mantel.  It  lit  up  beautifully 
the  Roman  candlesticks  and  the  Dutch  copper  coal 
scuttle,  and  did  not  smoke  more  than  was  to  have  been 
expected. 


NO.  26  JAYNE  STREET  103 

"I  wonder,"  said  Neith,  "if  fireplaces  have  n't  always 
smoked  more  than  we  have  noticed.  Lutra  Dunham  says 
domesticity  is  one  of  the  retarding  forces  of  civilization. 
It  has  kept  us  concentrated  on  the  means  of  living,  when 
our  proper  objective  is  to  live." 

"There  is  a  lot  of  sense  in  everything  Lute  says," 
agreed  Eustace,  "but  before  the  war  I  would  n't  have 
admitted  it.  It  is  the  sort  of  thing  this  war  teaches  you 
—  that  we've  got  to  get  the  machinery  of  life  ander  our 
feet.  I  never  used  to  think  that  housekeeping  was  part  of 
that  machinery,  but  at  a  time  like  this  you  see  that  it  is. 
It  has  to  take  its  place  in  the  how  of  things. 

"Why,"  he  expanded,  "y°u  can't  do  anything  with 
an  army  until  you  drag  it  out  from  under  the  wheels  of 
just  living,  three  meals  a  day  and  the  buttons  sewed  on 
and  the  shoes  and  socks  mended." 

"Well,  as  I  understand  it,  that's  the  whole  philosophy 
of  feminism  in  America,"  Neith  agreed.  "That  women 
have  got  under  the  wheels.  You  put  it,  I  must  say, 
Eustace,  very  aptly." 

Looking  at  her  across  the  blue  rep  sofa,  in  her  brown 
and  sea-blue  dress,  Eustace  had  an  illuminating  idea. 
"You  know,"  he  said,  "I  should  n't  wonder  if  this  war 
is  going  to  bring  men  and  women  closer  together,  under 
standing  one  another,  you  know."  He  felt  very  close  to 
her  then,  to  something  mysterious  and  sacred  in  her,  like 
the  emanation  from  an  altar.  He  thought  that  with  just 
another  turn  of  the  mind  he  would  have  made  a  tre 
mendous  discovery,  come  upon  one  of  those  submerged 


104  NO.  26  JAYNE  STREET 

wonders  that  seemed  to  swim  everywhere  so  close  to  the 
surface  of  the  national  life  in  those  days  just  preceding 
the  war.  Probably  all  that  he  would  have  discovered 
would  have  been  that  he  was  in  love  with  her.  As  it  was, 
he  found  her  utterly  charming,  and  uncramped  his 
soul. 

They  spent  the  next  morning  riding  up  Riverside 
Drive  on  top  of  the  bus,  along  the  river,  spread  in  a 
noble  glitter  to  the  sun.  Long  Island  and  the  new  Flying- 
Grounds  claimed  him  for  the  next  two  days,  and  then, 
between  that  and  a  trip  to  Washington,  he  carried  her 
off  to  the  Grand  Palace  where  they  danced  every  other 
dance  together  for  an  hour. 

Very  little  passed  between  them  but  the  lightest  of 
light  exchanges. 

"You  must  fly  with  me  sometime.  I  can  tell  by  the 
way  you  dance  that  it  would  come  natural  to  you." 

"Oh,  with  you,  Eustace—" 

"By  Jove,  I'll  show  you  America!" 

They  embroidered  on  this,  planning  extravaganzas  of 
sight-seeing.  She  saw  no  more  of  him  after  that  until  the 
Sunday  afternoon  when  she  opened  Twenty-Six  Jayne 
Street  to  hospitality. 

In  the  meantime  Adam  Frear  had  taken  her  to  Cooper 
Union  to  a  meeting  celebrating  the  new  Russian  Repub 
lic.  Neith  began  to  be  intrigued  with  the  exhilaration  of 
Internationalism.  There  was  something  very  comfort 
able  about  being  able  to  extend  the  hand  of  fellowship  to 
struggling  peoples,  with  the  consciousness,  also,  of  being 


NO.  26  JAYNE  STREET  105 

able  to  extend  it  well  filled  from  the  pocket.  It  came  as  a 
surprise  to  find  that  Adam  Frear  regarded  the  move 
ment  in  Russia  as  a  prelude  only  to  the  real  revolution 
which  was  presently  to  take  place.  "You  must  meet  the 
real  revolutionists,"  he  told  her.  "There's  a  man  over 
on  the  East  Side  called  Trotzky  — "  But  for  the  mo 
ment  he  made  no  offer  to  bring  about  the  necessary 
contacts. 

§24 

It  occurred  to  Neith,  on  the  first  occasion  of  her  being 
formally,  or,  as  it  turned  out,  informally  at  home  to  her 
friends,  that  he  had  waited  to  prove  her.  It  was  not  a 
happy  discovery.  She  did  not  find  herself  at  any  time  in 
sympathy  with  what  seemed  to  be  the  prevailing  Ameri 
can  assumption  that  everything  a  woman  does  is  a  per 
formance,  to  which  the  American  man  sits  as  perpetual 
audience. 

It  had  struck  her  more  than  once  that  there  was  some 
thing  Oriental  in  a  widely  expressed  attitude  toward 
Suffrage  —  which  she  had  never  espoused,  but  toward 
which  she  now  felt  herself  driven  —  that  the  activities 
of  its  adherents  represented  a  series  of  tricks  which  if 
cleverly  performed  might  bring  the  expected  morsel  of 
political  privilege.  She  had  suspected  —  but  only  sus 
pected,  and  at  odd  moments  —  that  the  vaunted  free 
doms  of  American  women  covered  a  more  irritating,  be 
cause  more  fundamental,  servility  to  the  effect  they  pro 
duced  ;  an  effect  measured  by  their  relativity  to  a  game 


106  NO.  26  JAYNE  STREET 

to  be  played.  So  the  mere  intimation,  which  she  gathered 
from  his  manner,  of  Adam  Frear  being  present  at  her 
afternoon  in  the  character  of  audience,  affected  her  like 
the  acrid  waft  of  smoke  in  what  should  have  been  the 
pure  flame  of  her  social  quest.  It  might  have  proved 
quite  the  most  disturbing  element  of  timid  adventure, 
had  it  not  been  for  the  evidence  he  freely  offered  of  find 
ing  her  handling  of  her  oddly  assorted  company,  as  a 
performance,  entirely  adequate. 

If  he  appeared  to  discover  strategy  in  what  was  an 
instinctive  expression  of  personality,  he  at  least  ap 
proved  of  it  almost  to  the  point  of  losing  himself  in  the 
enjoyment  of  what  the  particular  strategy  had  con 
trived. 

Everybody  came. 

Fleeta,  who  had  assumed  a  responsibility  for  provid 
ing  Miss  Schuyler  with  the  largest  possible  variety  of 
social  contacts,  had  turned  up  with  a  Syrian  poet  of 
sorts,  and  a  Japanese  gentleman  who  was  credited  with 
having  rediscovered  one  of  the  lost  arts  of  eleventh-cen 
tury  enamels.  Eustace  brought  his  mother.  This  was 
disconcerting,  because  Neith  had  invited  none  of  the 
family,  having  taken  the  precaution  to  select  for  her 
first  venture,  a  Sunday  when  she  knew  that  Bruce  and 
Millicent  would  be  in  the  country.  She  would  have 
liked  to  have  her  own  people,  of  course.  But  supposing 
she  could  have  reconciled  Bruce  to  the  radical  editor, 
there  was  still  the  Japanese  gentleman,  who  did  not 
carry  his  enamels  about  with  him,  and  who  looked  rather 


NO.  26  JAYNE  STREET  107 

like  a  cotton  flannel  pup  after  the  baby  had  played  with 
it  awhile. 

But  Frances  Rittenhouse  showed  herself  not  in  the 
least  discomfited  by  Neith's  guests.  She  had  been  hurt 
too  deeply  by  life  ever  to  hurt  anybody  else,  even  by  in 
advertence.  Neith  recalled  her  as  beautiful.  She  saw  her 
now  as  a  fine  piece  of  hand- weaving  from  which  the  pat 
tern  has  been  eaten  by  acid  grief.  She  "toned"  beauti 
fully  with  all  Neith's  things  as  she  sat  on  the  sofa  and 
exchanged  reminiscences  of  Stamford  with  Lutra  Dun 
ham.  She  had  read  everything  that  Harwood  had  writ 
ten  about  the  war,  and  Eustace  had  had  him  at  the 
house.  It  even  turned  out  that  she  had  "sat  under" 
the  noted  Presbyterian  divine  who  was  the  father  of 
the  radical  editor,  and  related  to  the  Winthrops  of 
Boston. 

"You  must  come  to  see  me,  my  dear,"  she  said  to 
Neith,  as  Eustace  was  preparing  to  take  her  away.  "I 
used  to  be  very  fond  of  your  father,  and  was  longing  to 
meet  you." 

Neith  suddenly  realized  that  Frances  Rittenhouse 
never  would  have  called  on  her  at  Aunt  Doremas's  and 
relented  toward  Eustace  for  bringing  her  uninvited, 
which,  lacking  such  excuse,  had  a  note  almost  of  offi- 
ciousness. 

"I'll  come,  soon,"  she  responded  instantly,  and  in  the 
flush  of  relenting,  added  to  Eustace,  "Come  back  to 
supper;  there'll  be  four  or  five  of  us." 

As  a  matter  of  fact  there  were  seven  or  eight.  The 


108  NO.  26  JAYNE  STREET 

Syrian  poet  had  involved  himself  with  the  editor  of 
The  Proletariat  in  a  discussion  on  modern  poetry,  which 
everybody  wanted  to  hear.  Then  there  were  Van  Har- 
wood,  Fleeta,  and  the  Kendries,  of  course,  and  Adam 
Frear,  and  the  art  student  with  shell-rimmed  glasses 
and  bobbed  hair  simply  could  n't  tear  herself  away. 
She  was  a  tenant  of  Miss  Schuyler's,  really.  Fleeta 
had  produced  her.  For  the  back  suite  on  the  second 
floor  of  Twenty-Six  had  been  occupied  when  Neith 
moved  in,  by  a  young  man  who  was  something  or  other 
downtown  between  nine  and  four,  and  the  rest  of  the 
time  found  himself  in  a  state  of  sniggering  suggestive- 
ness  over  the  idea  of  occupying  the  same  floor  as  a  beau 
tiful  young  society  woman  entirely  unchaperoned.  He 
developed  a  habit  of  being  always  on  the  stairs  or  in  the 
hall  when  Miss  Schuyler  was  going  in  or  out,  and  on  one 
occasion  followed  her  to  a  Village  tea-room  and  claimed 
her  acquaintance. 

Fleeta,  on  being  consulted,  had  made  short  work  of 
him.  "7  know  his  kind.  Thinks  if  you  give  up  any  of  the 
conventions,  you  are  ready  to  chuck  the  whole  Ten 
Commandments.  There  are  dozens  of  him  trying  to  get 
counted  in  the  Village  by  renting  a  room  there." 

As  a  matter  of  fact,  the  young  man  had  confided  to 
Neith  at  the  tea-room  that  though  he  was  n't  an  artist 
himself,  he  liked  artistic  people,  and  considered  that  he 
had  a  special  gift  for  bringing  them  out. 

Thus  far  Neith  had  successfully  resisted  Aunt  Emmy's 
reminiscences  of  the  "really  nice"  people  who  had  left 


NO.  26  JAYNE  STREET  109 

their  traces  in  Jayne  Street  in  lovely  fanlights  over  pure 
Corinthian  doors,  in  marble  mantels,  and  moulded  cor 
nices,  and  in  particular  of  the  Severences  to  whose 
social  tradition  Aunt  Emmy  took  for  granted  Neith 
had  become  heir.  But  the  sudden  relaxation  of  Aunt 
Doremas's  disapproval  had  brought  an  inundation  of 
heavy  furniture,  pieces  which  Aunt  Doremas  had  no 
use  for,  and,  in  the  thrifty  way  of  the  rich,  found  too 
good  to  give  away.  Neith  had  accepted  a  gate-legged 
tea-table  and  one  or  two  smaller  articles  that  had  be 
longed  to  her  mother.  But  she  rebelled  against  a  carved 
and  gilt- trimmed  black  walnut  bedroom  "set"  which 
Aunt  Doremas  obligingly  sent  over  one  morning. 

"There's  a  certain  continuity  of  personality  one  gets 
out  of  association  with  one's  own  past,"  she  confided 
to  Fleeta,  "but  I  don't  know  why  I  should  have  Aunt 
Rebecka's  past  thrust  upon  me." 

It  was  Fleeta  who  had  already  found  fault  with 
Neith's  rooms  on  the  ground  that  they  "did  n't  belong" 
to  the  neighborhood  nor  to  her  project  of  self -Ameri 
canization. 

"They  are  part  of  me,  part  of  my  experience,"  Neith 
protested.  "I  have  to  begin  with  what  I  am,  don't  I?" 

"With  what  you  want  to  be  "  —  Fleeta  was  immensely 
confident.  "That's  why  I  cut  off  my  hair.  Woman's 
*  crown  of  glory,'  you  know,  all  that  sentimental  sex 
stuff.  I  cut  it  off.  When  I  lived  in  Michigan  I  was  crazy 
about  things  like  yours,  but  now  I  belong  to  the  future." 
Fleeta  had  amazingly  expressed  this  sureness  in  the  fur- 


110  NO.  26  JAYNE  STREET 

nishing  of  her  own  apartments  in  bright  purples  with  a 
great  deal  of  'black  and  orange. 

But  it  was  Fleeta  who  had  solved  both  Neith's  prob 
lems  by  proposing  that  Neith  add  the  back  rooms  to 
her  lease,  the  young  man  with  the  gift  for  bringing  out 
artistic  people  only  claiming  them  by  the  month.  This 
being  accomplished,  and  the  "set"  duly  installed  there, 
Fleeta  had  produced  the  art  student  as  tenant.  She  was 
engaged  in  helping  Miss  Schuyler  to  serve  the  supper 
by  the  time  Eustace  returned. 

It  was  a  delightful  supper.  There  was  something  hot 
in  a  chafing-dish  to  be  eaten  with  thin  bread  and  butter 
and  ripe  olives.  There  was  a  nearly  unattainable  cheese, 
beaten  to  a  paste  with  oil  and  paprika;  and  a  glorified 
apple  cake  that  had  been  waiting  in  the  ice-box,  ready 
to  be  popped  into  the  oven  at  the  last  moment.  Neith 
admitted  that  the  apple  cake,  by  affinity,  called  for 
beer,  but  that  she  had  been  ignorant  of  the  local  meas 
ures  for  acquiring  that  beverage.  Whereupon  Harwood 
and  Kendries  volunteered  for  that  service  and  returned 
with  Eustace  and  half  a  dozen  bottles  apiece. 

As  the  supper  proceeded,  the  discussion  on  Free  Verse 
reached  a  point  at  which  the  Syrian,  who  was  really  a 
poet,  recited  the  six  perfect  examples  of  the  art  which 
hang  in  the  Mosque  at  Mecca.  Harwood,  who  was  all  for 
a  purely  spontaneous  product,  sang  Trench  songs  in  the 
vernacular  in  a  very  tolerable  barytone.  Very  little  was 
said  about  the  war  in  any  character. 

That  was  said  by  Fleeta,  for  though  the  Zimmermann 


NO.  26  JAYNE  STREET  111 

letters  had  left  the  Pacifists  with  not  a  leg  to  stand  on 
except  to  be  glad  that  they  at  least  had  not  started  the 
war,  it  was  not  in  Fleeta  to  admit  the  impossible.  Fleeta, 
in  view  of  the  lapse  from  popularity  of  the  German  lan 
guage,  had  been  given  a  vacation  on  half-pay,  and  was 
installed  as  corresponding  secretary  of  the  Peace  Asso 
ciation. 

Harwood  rallied  her  a  little  on  her  qualifications, 
wanting  to  know  if  it  was  n't  a  fact  that  most  of  their 
subscribers  spoke  German.  Upon  which,  Fleeta  com 
mitted  the  triumphant  indiscretion  of  admitting  that 
this  could  n't  be  proved  because  so  many  of  the  sub 
scriptions  came  in  anonymously. 

Fleeta  insisted,  however,  that  current  opinion  was  n't 
the  true  indicative  of  current  thought  that  it  seemed  to 
be.  The  Proletariat  had  n't  had  a  chance  to  register  in 
the  Capitalist  Press.  And  when  Mrs.  Carteret  Keys  had 
chartered  a  car  to  carry  a  protesting  delegation  to  Wash 
ington,  they  had  been  obliged  to  resort  to  the  ranks  of 
the  unemployed  to  fill  up  the  seats.  Which  proved  her 
former  contention  that  this  was  a  Capitalist  war.  She 
claimed  in  her  position  the  support  of  the  radical  editor, 
whose  father  was  a  minister  and  whose  name,  Stafford 
Winthrop  Evans,  was  quite  as  good  in  its  way  as  Schuy- 
ler  or  Doremas.  Mr.  Evans  was  unequivocal  but  half 
hearted.  It  struck  Neith  that  the  radicals  among  her 
guests  were  rather  camouflaging,  under  economic  and 
political  pretenses,  a  purely  American  love  of  things 
doing. 


NO.  26  JAYNE  STREET 

As  she  thought  of  the  evening  afterwards,  it  seemed  to 
her  that  in  spite  of  the  enjoyability  of  everything,  its 
quality  was  thin.  It  lacked  subtlety.  Everything  was 
said  and  nothing  inferred. 

It  lacked,  as  she  had  so  often  heard  said  abroad,  with 
the  sense  of  at  last  understanding  what  it  meant,  back 
ground,  the  rich  shadows  of  history,  the  high  lights  of 
class  and  caste.  The  sort  of  people  who  assembled  thus 
in  Europe  had  always  the  effect  of  detaching  themselves 
from  a  picture,  composed  and  mellowed,  within  which 
at  any  moment  they  might  resume  their  appointed 
places.  And  you  knew,  of  course,  what  those  places  were. 
The  consciousness  of  place  was  always  present  like  the 
accompaniment  of  music  to  the  tune  of  their  social  inter 
course. 

But  with  her  guests  there  had  been  actually,  with  the 
possible  exception  of  Frances  Rittenhouse,  no  picture 
to  come  from.  America  was  after  all  not  a  picture,  but  a 
procession.  Perhaps  that  was  all  that  Democracy  could 
be,  moving  streams  that  crossed  and  recrossed  and  eddied 
together  for  a  little  space.  It  was  in  the  nature  of  proces 
sions  that  they  should  move,  and  it  was  in  the  nature  of 
pictures  that  they  should  ripen  and  mellow — and  decay. 

This,  then,  was  the  American  bond,  to  be  bound  for 
the  same  place,  or  at  least  in  the  same  direction.  Democ 
racy,  of  course,  could  have  nothing  to  do  with  the  place 
from  which  you  came.  And  Adam  Frear's  testing  atti 
tude  had  meant  simply  that  he  wished  to  make  certain 
that  she  was  worthy  to  march  in  the  direction  from 


NO.  26  JAYNE  STREET  113 

which  the  light  arose  that  illuminated  him.  It  was  the 
final  happy  note  of  her  conclusion  that  he  had  been  so 
patently  pleased. 

§25 

Neith's  retrospective  pleasure  in  the  success  of  her 
evening  was  pricked  through  with  the  uneasy  question 
as  to  what  Eustace  had  meant  by  bringing  his  mother 
to  call,  if,  indeed,  he  meant  anything  at  all. 

Neith  Schuyler  was  not  the  sort  of  young  woman  to 
imagine  that  every  young  man  who  seeks  her  society 
does  so  with  the  object  of  marrying  her.  She  had  ac 
cepted  the  young  aviator's  readiness  to  be  entertained 
as  part  of  the  reaction  she  was  accustomed  to  in  men 
fresh  from  the  Front.  She  liked  Eustace  and  was  proud  of 
him,  so  far  as  their  somewhat  remote  cousinship  allowed, 
and  curiously  indisposed  to  any  alteration  in  their  pres 
ent  status. 

She  was  all  the  more  prompted  to  find  an  excuse  for 
Mrs.  Rittenhouse's  interest  in  her,  in  the  situation  of  the 
General,  her  husband.  There  came  back  to  Neith,  as  she 
reflected,  suggestions  of  an  indefinable  new  animus  in 
the  attitude  of  the  Aunts  toward  Frances.  Their  jealousy 
of  one  another  had  apparently  been  quashed  in  the  com 
mon  opportunity,  as  Bruce  Havens  expressed  it,  to  "put 
something  over"  on  the  unhappy  wife.  Only  a  day  or 
two  ago  she  had  met  them  carrying  a  basket  of  delicacies 
to  Eleventh  Street.  The  dear  General  was  down  with  a 
touch  of  influenza. 


114  NO.  26  JAYNE  STREET 

Neith  recalled  all  she  could  remember  of  that  old 
quarrel  of  the  General's  with  his  wife,  unconsciously 
bringing  to  bear  upon  it  new  interpretations  of  her  wider 
knowledge.  Incredible  as  it  now  seemed  in  his  present 
condition  of  ratty  senility,  Eustace  Rittenhouse  senior 
had  been  the  sort  of  man  women  loved.  He  had  been 
handsome.  In  Eustace  junior  there  was  proof  of  that. 
But  if  there  had  been  any  more  to  him  than  the  flaunt 
ing  maleness  which  was  so  much  admired  by  women  of 
the  last  generation  and  looks  so  ridiculous  to  women  of 
this,  there  was,  as  Neith  saw  him,  nothing  left  of  it.  He 
was  not  even  a  "General"  intact.  Neith  seemed  to  recall 
a  long  suit  at  law  to  confirm  the  distinction  that  he 
claimed,  but  could  not  for  the  life  of  her  say  how  it  had 
turned  out.  And  he  had  had  "affairs."  He  had  belonged 
to  that  nearly  extinct  species  who  imagined  themselves 
certified  in  a  superlative  maleness  by  the  number  and 
variety  of  their  relations  to  women.  To  the  modern 
American  man  there  is  something  absurd  in  such  a  rat 
ing.  Gallantry  has  "gone  out"  along  with  whiskers  and 
top  boots. 

The  second  Mrs.  Rittenhouse  had  been  much  younger 
than  her  husband.  Too  young  to  realize  that  he  had  mar 
ried  her  for  much  the  same  reason  that  he  combed  his 
whiskers  fan  wise  across  his  chest.  She  with  her  beauty 
and  her  possessions  had  been  a  flourish  to  his  maleness. 
Besides,  it  was  not  in  Frances  Rittenhouse  to  question 
the  particular  marriage,  any  more  than  it  was  in  her 
generation  to  question  marriage  in  general. 


NO.  26  JAYNE  STREET  115 

But  it  was  native  to  the  generation  of  her  son  to  ques 
tion  it  for  her. 

Young  Eustace  had  already  begun  to  find  his  father 
ridiculous,  before  the  General's  inroads  on  his  wife's 
fortune,  which  according  to  report  went  to  mitigate  the 
General's  advancing  years  with  a  popular  dancer,  gave 
him  the  excuse  he  needed  for  insisting  on  a  separation. 
For  which  the  General  had  never  forgiven  his  youngest 
son. 

It  was  almost  incredible  to  Neith  that  the  old  wound 
of  the  publicly  affronted  wife  should  rankle  in  the  gentle 
breast  of  Frances  Rittenhouse.  But  she  found  it  pref 
erable  to  conclude  that  it  was  to  assure  his  mother  that 
Neith,  as  well  as  Millicent  and  Bruce,  was  on  her  side, 
that  Eustace  had  brought  her  to  call.  She  deliberately 
turned  her  mind  away  from  accepting  any  other  sug 
gestion.  The  determination  to  keep  this  phase  of  the 
matter  to  the  fore  led  her  to  mention  his  father's  illness 
to  Eustace,  when  he  took  her  to  dinner  at  Sherry's  on 
Tuesday  evening. 

She  began  by  assuming  that  he  would  know,  and  in 
quired  for  the  progress  of  the  General's  influenza.  She 
saw  instantly  that  he  did  not,  at  least,  know  as  much  as 
she  had  expected. 

"If  I  could  find  out!  It  is  a  continual  worry  to  my 
mother,  to  know  that  he  is  ill,  and  not  to  know  just  how 
seriously.  I  suppose  "  —  he  hesitated  —  "you  could  n't 
find  out  —  though  I  don't  want  to  drag  you  in  — " 

"I  can,  and  will,"  she  told  him.  "Your  mother  has  a 


116  NO.  26  JAYNE  STREET 

right  to  know,  and  I  shan't  in  the  least  mind.  Indeed, 
I  want  you  to  know  that  I  think  my  aunts  behave 
abominably." 

"If  one  could  only  make  out  why!  But  I  suppose 
there's  no  hoping  — " 

"Now,  Eustace!  There's  no  more  mystery  about  why 
women  behave  badly  than  why  men  do.  If  you  could 
explain  to  me  about  your  father  —  Let  us  not  begin  to 
apologize  to  one  another  for  our  kin,"  she  conceded. 
"I'll  find  out  and  let  you  know.  One  thing  you  can  be 
sure  of,  your  father  is  getting  every  care." 

"Even  that  is  hard  on  my  mother." 

"I  can  understand  that.  I  was  always  jealous  of  my 
father's  nurses.  But  your  mother —  Eustace,  do  you 
think  you  could  care  like  that,  so  that  no  matter  how 
badly  you  had  been  treated  you  could  still  — " 

The  table  had  been  cleared  between  them  for  dessert. 
The  aviator's  fine,  sinewy  hands  were  clasped  before 
him  on  the  cloth.  They  tightened  a  little  as  they  might 
have  on  the  wheel  when  the  first  breath  of  a  new 
wind  struck  him.  But  he  looked  at  her  steadily  as  he 
replied : 

"I'm  like  my  mother  in  most  things.  There  never 
would  be  but  one  person  for  me." 

"Yes,"  said  Neith.  "It  is  odd  how  you  know  those 
things  before  they  happen,  you  know,  but  you  do."  She 
said  to  herself  that  she  must  be  careful,  careful,  and  be 
gan  to  talk  about  the  play. 


NO.  26  JAYNE  STREET  117 

§26 

Neith's  method  of  getting  things  out  of  Aunt  Emmy 
was  to  treat  her  like  another  girl.  She  had  her  over  to  a 
cozy  tea  and  a  chat  the  very  next  afternoon,  and  pos 
sessed  herself  of  all  the  details  of  the  General's  influ 
enza.  There  were  plenty  of  details,  because  Aunt  Emmy 
and  Aunt  Doremas,  who  adhered  to  different  schools, 
had  each  had  her  own  doctor  in  to  see  him. 

"It's  the  disappointment  really,"  Aunt  Emmy  con 
fided.  "About  the  Potash  stock,  you  know.  They're 
forming  a  company,  and  the  General's  friend  wanted 
him  to  be  the  President.  It's  the  only  thing  the  poor 
dear  General  can  do  now,  for  his  country.  And  Frances 
is  so  obdurate." 

"You  mean  she  won't  give  him  the  money?" 

"Oh,  give!  You  can't  imagine  Eustace  would  ask! 
But  his  friend,  a  Mr.  Mellows,  went  to  call  on  her.  In 
the  friendliest  way.  As  an  investment  merely.  But  she 
would  n't  even  see  him.  And,  of  course,  you  know  how 
it  is  with  Becky  and  me.  We  can't  touch  our  princi 
pal.  And  with  our  position  to  keep  up  —  Still  — "  Aunt 
Emmy's  fair,  fat  face  was  suffused  with  the  satisfaction 
of  secret  sources  of  information.  "Eustace  is  not  en 
tirely  without  friends  nor  his  friends  without  means. 
There  are  some  people  who  have  their  country's  inter 
est  at  heart,  even  if  they  have  to  make  sacrifices." 

Neith  knew  that  Aunt  Emmy  had  a  tiny  fortune  in 
her  own  name,  a  legacy  from  some  dead  and  gone  Schuy- 


118  NO.  26  JAYNE  STREET 

ler,  two  or  three  thousand  dollars,  in  the  possession  and 
unaccounted  spending  of  which  she  fortified  herself 
against  Aunt  Doremas's  injunctions.  Always  in  imagi 
nation  she  was  about  to  assert  herself  in  the  wild  use  of 
her  small  capital,  but  actually  a  lifetime  of  timidity  had 
kept  it  intact. 

It  occurred  to  Neith  now  as  a  possibility  that  Aunt 
Emmy  might  be  at  the  point  of  offering  it  up  on  the 
altar  of  the  General's  financial  indiscretions,  which  had 
already  seen  the  smoke  of  two  women's  patrimonies. 
But  it  occurred  to  her  also  that  Emmy  would  prob 
ably  get  more  fun  out  of  it  that  way  than  any  other, 
so  she  contented  herself  with  a  mere  precautionary 
murmur. 

"I  should  n't  be  too  ready  to  give  my  confidence  to 
a  man  who  had  been  turned  down  the  way  the  General 
has  by  his  wife.  A  wife's  opportunity  for  knowing  is  usu 
ally  superior  to  an  outsider's." 

Aunt  Emmy  winced,  but  maintained  herself.  "Which 
makes  it  all  the  more  regrettable  when  she  fails  in  her 
duty  of  perfect  trust,  don't  you  think?  But  you  are  n't 
having  your  cigarette,  dear  — " 

Neith  did  not  care  for  smoking,  but  Aunt  Emmy  had 
once  or  twice  seen  her  light  a  cigarette  at  houses  where 
her  hostess  so  obviously  wished  to  smoke  herself.  And 
since  she  had  accepted  the  house  in  Jayne  Street  for  her 
niece,  Aunt  Emmy  rather  insisted  on  the  smoking  as  the 
evidence  of  the  advanced  ground  on  which  she  had 
accepted  it. 


NO.  26  JAYNE  STREET  119 

Neith  having  offered  up  the  propitiatory  fumes  to 
her  aunt's  open-mindedness,  they  came  back  to  the 
General. 

"He  need  n't  feel  so  badly  about  not  being  able  to 
offer  his  country  the  opportunity  to  make  potash  out  of 
sea  water,"  suggested  Neith.  "There's  Eustace.  He's 
given  him." 

"Oh,"  said  Aunt  Emmy,  "that's  part  of  his  dis 
appointment.  Eustace  did  n't  wait  to  be  given.  He 
went." 

"It  was  inconsiderate  of  him,"  Neith  admitted.  "But 
don't  you  think  it  is  rather  hard  on  Mrs.  Rittenhouse  to 
have  to  be  anxious  about  Eustace  and  his  father  both?" 

"Frances  made  her  own  choice." 

It  was  in  Neith's  mind  to  say  that  the  General  had  n't 
apparently  given  his  wife  any  choice  about  the  conduct 
of  their  marriage,  but  before  she  could  shape  it  to  Aunt 
Emmy's  understanding,  the  fat  old  face  hardened  to 
maiden  censoriousness.  "There  are  some  things,"  she 
said,  "that  when  she  has  given  her  promise  to  love, 
honor,  and  obey,  a  lady  should  never  see.  She  owes  it  to 
herself." 

"I  wonder,"  said  Neith,  "if  the  condition  of  being 
what  you  call  a  lady  does  n't  itself  include  the  prob 
ability  of  there  being  some  things  she  can't  see."  This 
went  high  and  wide. 

"I  should  think  very  likely  that  it  does,"  Aunt  Emmy 
agreed. 


120  NO.  26  JAYNE  STREET 

VIII 

§27 

ON  Friday  of  that  week,  Neith  allowed  Fleeta  to  cany 
her  off  to  a  Peace  meeting  at  Mrs.  Carteret  Keys's. 

Mrs.  Carteret  Keys  lived  on  East  Sixty-Fourth. 

This  statement  deserves  a  paragraph  to  itself  and  a 
paragraph  it  shall  have.  That  which  calls  itself  Society 
in  New  York  has  its  roots  in  Washington  Square,  stead 
ily  gnawed  upon  by  the  cellar  and  attic  infesting  hordes 
of  Little  Italy.  Up  the  long  stem  of  Fifth  Avenue,  around 
Murray  Hill,  and  the  upper  Forties,  you  can  still  see,  as 
on  the  trunk  of  a  chestnut  tree,  the  leaf  scars  of  its  pro 
gressive  growth.  Above  Fifty-Ninth  it  burgeons  dis 
creetly  as  far  as  the  Seventies  and  across  Park  Avenue, 
with  an  occasional  unpruned  branch  on  Lexington  and 
Madison.  Within  these  boundaries  Anybody  who  is 
Anybody  in  New  York  can  be  found.  Mrs.  Carteret  Keys 
had  a  house  on  Sixty-Fourth. 

The  most  disconcerting  discovery  Neith  had  made 
about  being  "in  Society"  in  America  is  that  it  does  not 
constitute  an  occupation.  People  who  are  striving  to  get 
"in"  may  manage  to  keep  busy  at  it,  but  the  most  piti 
ful  struggle  of  all  that  goes  on  in  New  York,  is  the  strug 
gle  of  those  involved  in  its  rich  exclusiveness  to  get  out 
into  the  living  world  of  affairs.  Mrs.  Carteret  Keys  was 
among  the  richest  and  most  importunate  of  these  strug- 
glers.  She  was  perpetually  starting  new  movements  in 


NO.  26  JAYNE  STREET 

the  hope  of  finding  one  that  would  remain  on  her  hands 
long  enough  to  give  her  the  thrill  of  achievement.  Suf 
frage,  Child  Welfare,  Recreation  Parks,  all  had  a  way  of 
slipping  out  of  her  direction  into  that  of  trained  workers. 
The  Peace  Association  was  the  only  thing  so  far  which 
had  not  developed  into  an  empty  succession  of  sitting  on 
platforms  and  signing  checks.  So  far  nobody  had  offered 
to  take  it  off  her  hands. 

Something  of  all  this  Neith  had  already  gathered  from 
Fleeta's  own  artless  admissions.  She  had  met,  in  com 
pany  with  Miss  Spence  and  Mrs.  Kendries,  a  dozen  or 
more  presumably  unmarried  —  with  the  Village  fashion 
of  name-keeping  one  never  felt  quite  certain  —  young 
women  whom  she  had  been  disposed  to  take  at  Fleeta's 
valuation  as  moving  forces  in  the  world  of  Radicalism. 
Lately  she  had  come  to  suspect  that  the  measure  of  their 
importance,  by  the  quantity  of  printed  matter  they 
could  manage  to  distribute,  was  hardly  the  true  one. 
But  it  was  not  until  that  evening,  as  she  rode  up  Fifth 
Avenue  with  Fleeta  and  a  Miss  Wilkins,  whom  she  had 
first  met  in  connection  with  Better  Babies,  and  who  was 
now  managing  a  campaign  for  Curing  Criminalism  by 
the  application  of  musical  rhythm,  and  a  much-perse 
cuted  —  Fleeta  said  she  was  persecuted  —  advocate  of 
Voluntary  Parenthood,  that  Neith  suspected  the  rela 
tion  of  all  this  agitation  to  East  Sixty-Fourth  Street. 

Mrs.  Carteret  Keys,  and  women  like  her,  paid.  It  was 
probable  that  Neith  had  lights  on  Mrs.  Carteret  Keys 
—  for  there  was  no  question  that  Great-Aunt  Doremas 


122  NO.  26  JAYNE  STREET 

was  Society  in  the  utmost  apotheosis  —  that  were  not 
shared  by  Fleeta,  lights  which  enabled  her  to  see  not 
only  Fleeta,  but  Miss  Wilkins  and  to  some  extent  Lutra 
Dunham  and  the  Birth  Control  lady,  as  so  many  points 
at  which  the  real  social  impotence  of  Society  discharged 
itself  in  floods  of  propaganda.  Which  made  her  all  the 
more  interested  to  hear  what  they  said  when  presently 
Fleeta  and  her  friends  began  to  talk  of  Rose  Matlock. 

"I  don't  care,"  Fleeta  was  insisting,  "how  many  peo 
ple  leave  us  so  long  as  we  have  Rose." 

And  though  the  others  showed  no  enthusiasm,  they 
admitted  that  it  was  a  point  in  their  favor  to  have  Rose. 

"There's  nothing,"  Fleeta  was  confident,  "that  Rose 
takes  up  that  does  n't  sooner  or  later  work  out  success- 
fully." 

"It  is  not,"  Miss  Wilkins  reminded  her,  "because  of 
anything  Rose  does  for  it." 

"She's  not  a  leader,"  said  the  Voluntary  Parenthood 
advocate.  "She's  never  been  arrested." 

"And  she  says  you  need  n't  be  either,  if  you  said  what 
you  have  to  say  to  the  people  that  were  anxious  to  hear 
it,  instead  of  insisting  on  saying  it  to  those  who  are 
anxious  not  to."  Fleeta  was  spirited.  "You  have  to  ad 
mit  that  Rose  can  say  things  that  nobody  else  can  say 
without  getting  arrested." 

Mrs.  Kendries  came  to  the  rescue.  "And  she  does 
get  us  things  at  a  pinch.  That  permit  for  the  Public 
School  —  " 

"Adam  Frear  helped  her!" 


NO.  26  JAYNE  STREET  123 

"Well,  if  he  did?  Adam  does  n't  help  everybody." 

"You  forget,"  said  Miss  Schuyler,  "I  don't  know 
everybody.  Who  is  Rose  Matlock?" 

"The  trouble  is,"  Fleeta  explained,  "that  you  are  n't 
able  to  say."  There  was  no  getting  at  Miss  Matlock. 
She  had  such  extraordinarily  original  approaches  to 
things  herself,  and  adduced  facts  of  so  unusual  a  com 
plexion  that  you  never  knew  how  to  refute  them,  you 
never  knew  even  whether  or  not  they  were  refutable. 
And  yet,  of  a  hundred  movements  which  arose  and 
chopped  on  the  waters,  that  one  which  later  exhibited 
a  genuine  tidal  force  was  the  one  which  Rose  Matlock 
had  espoused.  She  lectured  and  she  wrote,  but  it  was 
chiefly  as  an  informal  talker  that  she  scored.  She  held 
her  audience  in  the  hollow  of  her  hand,  and  yet  people, 
the  Social  Revolutionists  at  least,  did  n't  care  particu 
larly  for  her.  She  was  too  clear,  too  well  defined.  She 
either  knew  things  or  she  did  n't  know  them.  There  was 
about  Rose  Matlock  none  of  that  delicious  whirl  of 
social  speculation  which  makes  the  milieu  of  the  Social 
Revolutionist. 

"I  should  like  to  know  her,"  Neith  concluded. 

"Oh,  you  probably  won't  like  her,"  Fleeta  threw  out. 
"But  you  will  go  around  quoting  her,  like  the  rest  of  us." 

§28 

All  through  the  first  part  of  the  meeting  Neith  tried 
to  identify  Rose  Matlock  among  the  thirty -five  or  forty 
women  gathered  in  Mrs.  Carteret  Keys's  handsome 


124  NO.  26  JAYNE  STREET 

drawing-room,  where  there  was  nothing  native  but  Mrs. 
Carteret  Keys.  There  was  discreet  plunder  of  every 
European  period,  but  nothing  that  could  be  called 
American  unless  one  counted  the  good  taste  with  which 
it  had  been  assembled.  Neith  began  to  understand  the 
significance  of  Fleeta's  futuristic  furnishings.  The  Future 
was  the  only  indisputable  American  period. 

Neith  was  by  this  time  sufficiently  acquainted  with 
the  personnel  of  Social  Reconstruction  in  New  York  to 
realize  that  there  were  few  women  present  who  were 
important  as  personalities.  Fully  half  of  them  were  like 
Miss  Wilkins  and  Miss  Spence,  paid  disseminators  of 
those  sticks  and  straws  of  fact  that  collect  and  cohere 
on  the  surface  of  social  currents.  She  heard  their  names 
tossed  about  in  connection  with  the  names  on  Aunt 
Doremas's  calling  list,  who  stood  to  them,  no  doubt,  in 
the  relation  of  Mrs.  Carteret  Keys  to  the  Peace  Associa 
tion. 

The  search  of  the  evening  was  for  a  suitable  demon 
stration  to  convince  the  President  that  in  spite  of  accu 
mulating  appearances,  the  Country  would  not,  in  the 
event  of  a  declaration  of  war,  be  behind  him.  Neith  re 
called  a  remark  of  Van  Harwood's  that  if  the  President 
did  n't  get  a  move  on,  the  country  would  be  before 
instead  of  behind.  Fleeta's  idea  was  the  circulation  of 
a  pledge  with  a  million  signers,  not  to  fight  under  any 
circumstances.  The  Voluntary  Parenthood  lady  pro 
posed  a  universal  strike  of  women  not  to  bear  children 
until  war  was  abolished.  This  was  well  received,  but 


NO.  26  JAYNE  STREET  125 

damped  by  the  realization  that  the  present  war  might 
well  be  over  before  the  efficacy  of  such  a  measure  could 
be  tested.  Neith  made  a  rapid  calculation  of  the  prob 
able  diminution  of  the  population  by  the  enforcement 
of  such  a  strike  among  those  present,  and  decided  that 
this  measure  lacked  cogency.  Most  of  them  were  strong 
for  a  pamphlet,  a  serial  pamphlet  which  should  contain 
all  the  arguments  freshly  set  forth  and  should  somehow 
be  distinguished  in  its  make-up  from  all  other  pam 
phlets.  They  proposed  to  make  it  up  from  the  assem 
bled  company. 

Mrs.  Kendries  wished  to  know  if  all  the  important 
writers  on  International  topics  had  n't  actually  de 
clared  in  favor  of  war. 

The  Proposer  explained  that  she  had  expected  to  edit 
the  pamphlet  herself;  she  had  had  a  most  interesting 
talk  lately  with  a  man  who  had  just  come  up  from  a  six 
weeks'  tour  of  Mexico.  In  view  of  his  confirmation  of  her 
personal  views,  she  felt  she  could  handle  that  phase  of 
the  subject.  And  there  were  others.  Her  glance  included 
the  others  as  all  present. 

Mrs.  Carteret  Keys  subscribed  a  thousand  dollars. 

Some  one,  rising  too  far  back  for  Neith  to  observe  her, 
claimed  the  privilege  of  a  question. 

"I  should  like  to  know,"  came  a  quiet  voice,  with  a 
delicate  coldness  like  the  edge  of  a  knife,  "whether  any 
body  here  still  imagines  that  the  entrance  of  the  United 
States  into  the  war  can  be  averted.  Is  n't  it  a  fact  that 
war  is  now  so  near  us  that  the  only  practical  considera- 


126  NO.  26  JAYNE  STREET 

tion  is  whether  this  war  can  in  any  way  be  turned  to 
advantage  in  the  prevention  of  causes  of  war  for  the 
future?" 

Opinion  chopped  about  in  a  confusion  of  Ayes  and 
Noes.  Neith  detected  relief  in  many  of  the  affirma 
tives. 

"It  is  the  conclusion  I  have  come  to,"  said  the  voice, 
"and  it  is  only  one  of  many  conclusions  I  have  reached 
in  watching  the  progress  of  recent  events  and  thinking 
of  them." 

"If  you  would  just  please  come  forward — "  sug 
gested  the  chairman. 

"Madam  Chairman"  —  this  was  the  pamphleteer  — 
"I  thought  the  object  of  this  meeting  — " 

"Go  on,  Rose!"  Several  voices  encouraged. 

The  chairman  rapped  decisively.  "I  guess  we  all  want 
to  hear  Miss  Matlock." 

i  Neith  was  conscious  first  of  a  wonderfully  free  and 
simple  movement  as  the  figure  passed  her,  of  grace  with 
out  gracefulness.  As  the  speaker  faced  them  she  showed, 
in  the  middle  thirties,  a  face  of  contained,  smooth  sad 
ness,  under  dark-banded  hair.  A  striking  face,  not  beau 
tiful,  rather  a  lurking-place  for  beauty  that  played 
and  threatened  every  moment  to  break  through  the 
surface. 

"I  have  n't  changed  my  opinion  about  war,"  said 
Rose  Matlock  —  "about  the  stupidity  of  it  and  its 
needlessness.  But  I  begin  to  see  that  we  are  all  wrong  in 
our  handling  of  it.  We  are  handling  it  like  a  fever,  an 


NO.  26  JAYNE  STREET 

outbreak,  to  be  healed  by  direct  application.  And  I  have 
come  to  see  it  as  only  another  expression  of  social  in 
competence,  of  a  profounder  and  more  incurable  stupid 
ity  of  our  conception  of  society." 

"Capitalism!"  said  a  Socialist  member  to  scattered 
notes  of  assent.  ¥ 

"Capitalism,"  said  the  voice,  with  a  steady,  unin- 
flected  quality  like  the  tones  of  a  bell,  "is  only  another 
expression  of  the  thing  I  am  thinking  of,  of  our  incom 
petent  handling  of  ourselves,  of  our  handling  of  our 
selves  primarily  as  Self,  of  insisting  too  much  on  our 
selves  as  women,  on  insisting  on  men  as  men.  I  have 
worked  hard  to  prevent  this  war.  Nobody  in  America  is 
really  for  war,  but  we  are  going  to  have  this  war  chiefly, 
or  perhaps  solely,  because  we  do  not  know  how  to  elim 
inate  war.  We  do  not  know  how ! 

"Because  we  are  all  of  us,  at  all  times  and  in  the  most 
sacred  impulses  of  our  lives,  at  war  .  .  . 

"All  our  language  of  sex  is  phrased  in  the  terms  of 
war,  of  strategy,  of  maneuvers,  surprises.  .  .  .  We  talk 
of  conquest,  of  winning  and  being  won.  .  .  .  We  cannot 
come  together  for  the  purpose  of  increasing  our  kind 
without  a  treaty  of  peace  between  the  protagonists. 
Contracts  hedged  about  with  reprisals  and  indemnities. 
.  .  .  And  without  that  contract  we  fail  to  respect  our 
selves  and  one  another." 

The  audience  had  an  arrested  look.  Errant  enthusi 
asms  remained  as  they  were,  with  one  foot  in  the  air. 

The  chairman  rustled  some  papers  on  her   desk. 


128  NO.  26  JAYNE  STREET 

Miss  Mailock  fixed  her  with  a  steady,  shadowed  in 
sistence. 

"As  you  know,  Madam  President,  I  have,  while  op 
posing  all  war,  agreed  with  those  who  see  a  great  prac 
tical  advance  in  Democracy  as  the  fruit  of  this  particular 
war.  And  now  I  have  come  to  agree  to  it  myself  for  the 
sake  of  the  advance  it  will  make  in  personal  Democracy. 
For  I  see  that  we  can  make  very  little  by  the  abolition  of 
political  autocracy  so  long  as  we  set  up  in  our  private 
lives  an  autocracy  of  personal  feeling,  the  counterpart  of 
that  which  we  fight  against  when  we  see  it  thrown  large 
on  the  screen  of  politics. 

"I  have  just  come  from  the  West,"  she  said,  coming 
out  of  the  cloud  to  draw  a  little  nearer  to  her  audience. 
"And  I  have  seen  the  American  people  moving  toward 
this  war  with  an  urge  too  deep  even  for  their  under 
standing.  And  it  is  because  I  have  come  to  understand 
that  urge  myself  as  being  the  instinctive  Tightness  of  the 
American  Spirit  moving  toward  something  that  makes 
for  unanimity  of  men  and  women,  not  as  men  and 
women  but  as  humanity  ...  I  am  for  Peace,  I  believe  in 
ultimate  Peace,  but  I  see  no  good  in  following  a  personal 
vision  apart  from  the  crowd,  even  when  it  is  a  vision  in 
the  interests  of  the  crowd.  I  see  that  a  vision  itself  may 
become  an  autocracy  which  denies  the  very  end  it 
seeks.  .  .  .  And  because  I  have  come  to  see  that  it  is  not 
theories  of  Democracy  the  world  lacks,  but  experience 
of  it  ...  not  believing  it,  so  much  as  being  it  ...  I  have 
come  to  welcome  this  war  with  all  its  horrors  and  stu- 


NO.  26  JAYNE  STREET  129 

pidity,  and  to  wish  more  than  anything  else  to  take  my 
part  in  it  ... 

"And  to  ask  you,  Madam  President,  to  erase  my 
name  from  the  list  of  your  membership." 

IX 

§29 

AT  the  last  war  came  very  quietly. 

The  Kendries  had  gone  down  to  Washington  where 
Direck  was  due  on  some  Labor  business,  but  Neith  had 
declined  their  invitation  to  join  them.  Adam  Frear  was 
there,  and  Van  Harwood,  but  so  also  was  Eustace.  The 
last  time  or  two  that  she  had  seen  Lieutenant  Ritten- 
house,  Neith  had  been  careful.  There  was  reason  to  be; 
and  yet  she  asked  herself  derisively  what  she  was  wait 
ing  for.  She  had  always  meant  to  marry.  Of  late  that 
vague  intention  had  turned  to  a  definite  want,  given 
force,  no  doubt,  by  the  loss  of  her  father,  the  need  of 
completion.  The  cry  of  a  young  child,  the  touch  of  its 
tiny  hands,  woke  a  sudden  fierceness;  desires  stirred  in 
her  to  a  tune  whose  instrument  was  out  of  sight.  But 
with  it  all  she  had  a  disinclination  to  having  Eustace 
Rittenhouse  propose  to  her.  She  would  not  go  to  Wash 
ington  where  he  would  be  certain  to  find  her,  and  possi 
bly  read  encouragement  in  her  being  there. 

Early  in  the  evening  that  the  vote  was  being  taken  in 
Congress,  Neith  wandered  farther  than  usual  down 
Macdougal  Street  to  an  Italian  restaurant,  and  caught 


ISO  NO.  26  JAYNE  STREET 

on  every  side  the  heightened  friendliness,  the  rising  sense 
of  race.  She  fitted  what  she  felt  to  Rose  Matlock's 
phrases. 

She  had  not  yet  got  over  Rose  Matlock.  She  could  not 
remember  having  ever  been  so  stirred  by  another 
woman.  That  was  the  way  English  women  were  stirred 
by  Mrs.  Pankhurst.  But  the  members  of  the  Peace  As 
sociation  had  not  been  stirred,  not  all  of  them.  Neith 
scarcely  recalled  how  the  meeting  had  broken  up,  ex 
cept  that  it  had  been  almost  immediately  after  Rose 
Matlock  sat  down.  She  was  under  the  impression  that 
the  pamphleteer  had  put  her  own  motion  and,  by  the 
sheer  inattention  of  the  majority  of  the  members, 
passed  it. 

Going  home  afterward  she  had  not  wished  to  talk 
about  Rose  Matlock,  nor  had  Fleeta  talked. 

"I  shall  come  around,"  Fleeta  had  said.  "1  always 
do  come  around  to  agreeing  with  Rose,  but  I  feel  as 
if  a  ninth  wave  had  hit  me  and  my  face  is  full  of 
sand." 

Neith  understood  why  Miss  Matlock  was  not  a  leader. 
She  could  hardly  imagine  Mrs.  Carteret  Keys  and  the 
secretaries  breasting  successfully  the  strong  surf  of  her 
mind.  But  she  felt  in  Rose  Matlock  something  that  she 
felt  now,  walking  among  the  alien  peoples  of  lower  New 
York,  the  rising  sense  of  race.  That  was,  no  doubt,  what 
made  the  English  woman  the  power  she  was.  But,  of 
course,  the  English  were  a  race.  The  war  would  be  a 
good  thing  if  it  made  them  all  Americans  together.  And 


NO.  26  JAYNE  STREET  131 

she  wondered  what  Rose  Matlock  meant  by  an  autoc 
racy  of  personal  feeling. 

She  was  alone  in  her  room  that  night,  when  suddenly 
the  band  from  the  Fourteenth  Street  Armory  began  to 
play.  "Yankee  Doodle!"  A  few  minutes  later  the 
stringed  quartette  from  a  near-by  restaurant  began  to 
play  the  "Star-Spangled  Banner"  in  the  street,  followed 
by  the  "Marseillaise,"  and  the  Italian  national  air.  Far 
uptown  a  kiltie  band  piped  along  the  main  thorough 
fare,  and  a  little  later  the  bells  of  Santa  Maria  Madde- 
lena  began  to  ring. 

On  a  sudden  impulse  Neith  left  the  house  and  found 
a  taxi  to  take  her  to  Mrs.  Sherrod's  hotel.  Madelon  had 
been  back  in  town  for  nearly  a  week ;  she  would  be  com 
ing  home  from  the  theater  about  this  time;  Neith  fre 
quently  went  up  and  spent  the  night  with  her. 

With  the  new  sensitiveness  that  had  come  upon  her  of 
late,  Neith  divined  that  this  lonely  home-coming  was 
the  actress's  worst  hour.  The  hour  which  means  so  much 
to  the  artist,  of  exultation  in  the  successful  practice  of 
her  art,  the  response  of  the  audience,  and  the  sharp  reac 
tion  of  weariness.  At  times,  no  matter  what  they  talked 
about,  it  seemed  to  Neith  that  her  friend's  pain  was  like 
a  palpitant  presence  in  the  room.  She  could  not  get  her 
own  mind  off  thinking  where  Julius  must  be  at  that 
hour,  and  who  leaned  upon  his  interest  and  support. 

On  the  way  to  the  hotel  it  occurred  to  Neith  that 
surely  at  this  moment  of  national  decision,  Julius  Sher- 
rod  would  think  of  his  wife.  Her  own  heart  was  full  of 


132  NO.  26  JAYNE  STREET 

tears,  of  a  solemn  submission  to  the  will  and  the  power 
of  God.  It  seemed  to  her  so  natural  that  Julius  would 
rise  to  the  need  of  nobleness,  if  only  for  an  hour,  that 
she  did  not  go  to  Mrs.  Sherrod's  rooms  at  once,  but 
waited,  half  hidden  in  the  lobby,  until  she  saw  Madelon 
come  in  alone.  Contrary  to  her  expectation,  she  found 
the  actress  in  a  high  mood,  one  that  fled  like  an  innocent 
soul  over  hot  ploughshares  to  proof  of  its  own  integrity. 

"You  can't  imagine,  honey,  what  an  audience  it  was 
to  play  to,  electrified  as  they  were.  The  news  came  in 
between  the  third  and  fourth  acts.  Suddenly  the  orches 
tra  broke  off  and  then,  after  an  interval,  'America.'  We 
could  hear  the  audience  come  rustling  up  out  of  their 
seats  like  the  rush  of  a  tide."  There  were  other  exciting 
things  to  tell,  dramatic  things  at  the  opera,  where  a 
German  prima  donna  was  singing,  crowds  singing  as 
they  issued  on  the  streets. 

They  looked  out  of  the  window  and  saw  searchlights 
playing  over  the  city  from  warships  in  the  harbor. 

"A  little  beam  that  strikes  across  the  dark 
And  falls  far  short  of  heaven," 

Mrs.  Sherrod  quoted. 

"Madelon,  tell  me,  does  one  get  any  closer  to  heaven, 
as  one  goes  on?" 

"One  feels  more  confident  that  there  is  heaven.  Order 
.  .  .  and  law.  But  whether  one  gets  any  closer  to  order  in 
one's  own  life,  or  feels  any  surer  of  the  law  ...  I  don't 
know,  honey,  I  don't  know."  Mrs.  Sherrod  sighed,  and 


NO.  26  JAYNE  STREET  133 

then,  having  trusted  Neith  to  make  the  connection  her 
self,  she  asked,  "Have  you  seen  Vera  yet?" 

"No." 

"I'm  told  she  is  having  a  great  success." 

"Madelon  ...  It's  no  use  pretending.  I  should  n't  go 
to  see  Vera  Jerome  under  any  circumstances.  I  think 
she  has  behaved  abominably  to  you.  Abominably!"  She 
did  not  add  that  the  particular  circumstance  of  her 
having  refused  to  go  involved  an  invitation  from  Adam 
Frear,  a  party  having  been  hastily  made  up  with  the 
Kendries. 

The  invitation  had  been  over  the  telephone  and  Neith 
had  simply  pleaded  a  previous  engagement,  not  seeing 
her  way  to  an  explanation. 

"Neith,  dear,"  said  the  actress,  "y°u  must  not  let 
anything  —  anything  you  think  about  Vera  and  me  — 
influence  your  judgment  of  her  acting." 

"I  don't.  I  shan't  think  anything  of  you  that  you 
don't  wish  me  to  think.  But  nothing  on  earth  could  pre 
vent  me  from  thinking  Vera  Jerome  anything  but  a 
flashy,  ungrateful  little  cad !  Madelon !  You  are  n't  go 
ing  back  on  all  you 've  always  insisted  on  about  your  art! 
You  can't  believe  that  anybody  who  would  behave  as 
Vera  has  behaved  to  you,  could  have  anything  worth 
while  to  say!" 

"Perhaps  she  has  that  to  say." 

"I  don't  understand,  Madelon." 

"If  I  was  right,  and  there  is  nothing  to  her  but  a  hand 
some  body  and  a  bag  of  tricks  — " 


134  NO.  26  JAYNE  STREET 

"Which  she  picked  up  from  you!" 

"And  the  best  manager  in  New  York  — " 

" Whom  you  trained!" 

"If  that  is  all  she  has,  it  is  bound  in  the  end  to  show. 
She  will  demonstrate  all  that  I  believe  about  the  sub 
stantial  fiber  of  acting,  all  the  more  for  having  a  little 
flare-up  of  success  at  the  start." 

"At  your  expense!  Yours!" 

"My  dear  child,  when  you  give  yourself  to  the  Powers 
to  be  proved  on  their  behalf,  you  can't  always  ask  that 
they  will  prove  you  pleasantly.  All  that  I  have  ever 
asked  is  that  the  truth  about  acting  shall  be  manifest  in 
my  work  —  or  against  it,  if  that  is  the  way  it  has  to  be. 
Besides,  I  may  have  been  mistaken  about  Vera.  Some  of 
the  critics  seem  to  think  she  has  real  talent." 

"And  you  know  how  much  dependence  to  place  on  the 
critics!  Perhaps  I've  no  right  to  ask,  but  —  does  Julius 
think  she  has  talent?" 

The  worn,  lovely  face  of  the  actress  whitened.  "Ah, 
my  dear,  that  I  have  n't  asked."  She  closed  the  window 
and  came  back  into  the  half -lighted  room.  "Here  we  are 
talking  about  men  and  women,  and  the  country  at  war ! " 

"Rose  Matlock  says  that  is  what  we  are  at  war  about, 
the  fundamental  relations  ..." 

"You've  met  Rose!" 

"I've  heard  her.  Yes.  I  see  what  she  meant.  Personal 
Democracy.  Autocracy  of  personal  feeling  .  .  .  That's 
what  Julius  and  Vera  have  done,  they've  just  gone 
#head  .  .  .  Forgive  me,  Madelpn !  It  is  horrid  of  me  tp 


NO.  26  JAYNE  STREET  135 

talk  about  your  personal  affairs  as  if  it  were  a  case  in 
court." 

"We  are  all  in  court  now,  honey.  The  whole  country. 
Democracy  itself.  Yes,  that  is  what  Rose  meant.  It  has 
come  to  her  rather  lately,  I  think.  I  have  heard  her  two 
or  three  times.  There  is  n't  any  real  reason  why  a  man 
should  indulge  his  personal  feelings  about  women  any 
more  than  his  personal  feelings  about  money,  or  power, 
or  any  of  the  things  we  are  fighting  about.  Or  if  there  is 
a  reason  why  sex  feeling  can't  be  —  democratized,  why, 
then  democracy  is  n't  a  principle.  It  is  just  —  an  expe 
dient,  a  method." 

«"• 

"I  suppose  this  war  will  help  us  to  find  out,"  Neith 
ruminated.  "They've  found  out  a  lot  of  things  in  Eng 
land.  You'd  be  surprised!  Sit  down,  Madelon,  I'm  going 
to  make  you  some  cocoa."  It  was  past  midnight,  but 
they  heard  a  band  going  by  in  the  street,  playing  "Tip- 
perary." 

"Have  you  any  one  to  go,  Madelon?" 

"I've  a  nephew  or  two,  and  a  boy  in  my  company. 
That's  the  pity  of  it;  all  that  young  talent,  in  so  many 
lines,  cut  off." 

"  I  know.  And  yet  somehow  I  feel  more  reconciled  than 
I  thought  I  was  going  to  be.  Something  Rose  Matlock 
said  about  not  following  the  personal  vision  when  it 
leads  you  apart  from  the  crowd.  It's  the  togetherness. 
All  those  peoples,  marching,  marching  ..." 

"Yes,"  said  the  actress.  "Even  the  Germans.  They'll 
get  iomething,  too.  Even  though  they  are  cast  for  the 


136  NO.  26  JAYNE  STREET 

villain  in  this  piece,  we've  got  to  remember  that!  We'll 
all  get  something." 

§30 

Neith  found  herself  trying  to  give  shape  to  some  of 
the  reasons  she  felt  for  being  more  contented  with 
America  than  she  had  been  since  her  return.  This  was 
three  or  four  evenings  later,  when,  after  a  rather  formal 
note  asking  permission,  Adam  Frear  came  to  call  on  her 
in  Jayne  Street. 

It  was  not  all  at  once  that  she  could  get  to  the  point  of 
her  own  reactions.  Adam  seemed  tired;  showed  himself 
appreciative  of  whatever  there  was  in  her  society  and  en 
vironment  that  served  to  cut  him  off  from  the  strenuos- 
ities  of  his  two  weeks  at  Washington.  In  his  willingness 
to  be  charmed,  for  once,  Neith  was  able  to  meet  him 
personally  outside  their  common  interest  in  the  Ameri 
can  scene.  The  day  had  closed  in  early  with  one  of  those 
quick,  chill  rains  that  come  skurrying  on  the  track  of  the 
first  April  suns.  There  was  a  rawness  in  the  air  that  jus 
tified  the  kindling  of  a  fire  under  the  white  mantel.  It 
glinted  pleasantly  on  the  brass  fire  furnishings,  on  the 
satiny  surface  of  scarlet  tulips  in  the  Pomona  bowl,  and 
on  the  great  shell  pins  that  confined  Neith's  shell-brown 
hair.  Adam  Frear's  eyes  rested  on  her  with  the  quiet 
gaze  with  which  a  man  takes  in  a  pleasing  scene,  too 
familiar  to  do  more  than  quietly  please.  If  Neith  had 
found  him  delightful  in  his  character  of  the  practiced 
interviewer,  giving  himself  kindly  and  consciously  to 


NO.  26  JAYNE  STREET  137 

the  elucidation  of  the  personal  point  of  view,  she  found 
him  endearing  in  his  surrender  of  the  conversational 
lead. 

Their  earlier  role  of  prophet  and  neophyte  was  laid 
aside.  For  the  first  time  they  talked.  Presently  she  found 
herself  putting  her  new-found  security  into  words. 

"I've  found  what  I  want  to  do."  She  shaped  it  at  last. 
"Not  a  career.  I  don't  care  in  the  least  for  a  career.  So 
far  as  a  career  is  concerned  with  the  thing  done.  I  '11  roll 
bandages  or  fill  cartridges  cheerfully.  But  I  do  want,  and 
mean  to  have,  a  part  in  bringing  to  consciousness  what 
ever  it  is  that  is  struggling  in  this  war  to  get  through  to 
us.  You  feel  sure,  don't  you,  that  there  is  something  try 
ing  to  get  through?" 

"Oh,  undoubtedly." 

"And  you  think  —  I  remember  you  said  something 
about  that  once  —  it  is  a  larger  sort  of  Democracy?" 

"Something  like  that." 

"Well  — "  She  was  struck  suddenly  with  the  general 
resemblance  of  his  views  to  Rose  Matlock's  and  the 
striking  difference.  She  wondered  —  "It  will  take  a  lot 
of  finding  out,  I  suppose." 

She  veered  off  from  what  she  had  meant  to  say;  she 
had  a  curious  inhibition  against  mentioning  Rose  Mat- 
lock,  and  took  up  the  thread  a  little  farther  along.  "The 
thing  that  concerns  me  is  to  change  with  the  changes  that 
are  coming.  I  suppose  they  will  be  tremendous." 

"Oh,  tremendous!" 

"Sometimes  I  am  tempted  to  agree  with  Fleeta,"  she 


138  NO.  26  JAYNE  STREET 

said,  glancing  about  the  pleasant  room  which  for  the 
first  time  struck  her  as  having  nothing  American  in  it. 
"I  brought  too  much  of  my  past  with  me." 

"You  are  farther  along  than  most  Americans  if  you 
can  recognize  it  as  belonging  to  the  past." 

"Oh,  I  can  do  that.  I  know  that  most  of  my  opinions 
are  heirlooms.  Even  if  I  have  n't  the  courage  to  take 
them  to  the  shop  and  change  them  for  something  else, 
I  at  least  recognize  them  as  genuine  antiques.  I  suppose" 
—  she  addressed  herself  to  a  slight  abstraction  which  she 
discovered  in  him  from  time  to  time  —  "y°u  scrapped 
your  past  ages  ago." 

"I  had  n't  very  much.  The  past  of  a  small  town  in 
Iowa,  which  is  the  skimpiest  past  imaginable." 

"You've  no  idea,"  she  smiled,  "of  my  'satiable  curi 
osity'  as  to  how  you  came  to  be."  She  noted  that  the 
quotation  escaped  him,  as  much  of  the  small  change  of 
the  book-nourished  circle  to  which  she  was  habituated 
often  did. 

There  was  not  much  he  had  to  tell  her.  His  father  had 
been  the  proprietor  of  what  had  begun  in  his  father's 
time  as  a  crossroads  store.  In  Adam's  time  it  had  de 
veloped  into  the  General  Merchandise  Emporium  of  an 
agricultural  center.  The  concern  did  a  little  banking  on 
the  side  and  loaned  money  on  first  mortgages. 

"Even  then,"  Adam  Frear  told  her,  "I  had  a  notion 
of  the  whole  thing  as  absurd,  inadequate.  My  father  ac 
cepted  my  attitude  as  indicating  that  I  had  'no  head  for 
business.'  He  sent  me  to  college  with  the  idea  of  making 


NO.  26  JAYNE  STREET  139 

an  editor  of  me,  and  even  acquired  an  interest  in  the 
country  paper  in  advance." 

"How  proud  he  must  be  of  you." 

"Disappointed.  My  father  takes  the  limitations  of  his 
life  seriously.  He  has  no  measure  for  what  is  done  outside 
of  it.  But  he  was  a  good  old  sport.  He  let  me  have  all  the 
money  I  needed  for  college  and  two  years  abroad. 
Then  the  Evening  Star  bought  my  series  on  'Municipal 
Management  Abroad.'  Lanier  Stevens  was  editor  at  that 
time  and  he  had  an  eye  for  social  change.  And  the  rest 
developed.  It  is  good  of  you  to  take  this  interest  in  my 
affairs."  He  turned  back  to  her  with  intention.  They  were 
sitting  together  on  the  sofa  across  from  the  delicate 
flicker  of  the  fire,  just  reached  by  the  perfume  of  a  spray 
of  white  lilac  thrust  low  down  between  the  tulips.  "I  had 
meant  to  tell  you  of  them  hoping  that  you  might  be  led 
through  them  to  take  an  interest  in  me." 

"As  if  we  weren't,  all  of  us  —  more  than  any 
body." 

"Ah,  but  I  mean  personally.  As  interested  as  I  am,  as 
I  have  always  been,  in  you." 

Silence  opened  like  a  gulf.  Twice  Neith  tried  to 
bridge  it  with  a  light  rejoinder,  and  fell  into  the  gulf 
from  which  Adam  presently  rescued  them  both. 

"I  wonder  if  you  ever  guessed  the  degree  of  my  inter 
est  in  you  that  time  we  met  at  Homburg  ...  or  the  na 
ture  of  my  interest." 

"I  did  n't  guess."  Six  years!  It  would  be  six  years  in 
June. 


140  NO.  26  JAYNE  STREET 

"I  hoped  you  had  n't  ...  then.  You  knew,  did  n't 
you,  that  my  wife  died  more  than  a  year  ago?" 

"Mrs.  Sherrod  told  me.  And  how  devoted  you 
were." 

He  seemed  unaccountably  to  get  a  lift  of  relief  from 
that.  "I  like  to  think  that  she  was  as  happy  as  she  was 
capable  of  being  until  the  last." 

Neith  recalled  Mrs.  Frear's  fretful  confidence  of  frus 
tration  with  a  rush  of  commiseration  for  her  husband. 
"I  am  sure  she  was." 

"I  am  glad  you  feel  that,  having  met  her.  It  makes 
it  possible  to  say  that,  though  I  did  my  best,  my  mar 
riage  left  me  with  a  great  deal  to  give  .  .  .  and  to 
get." 

It  was  incredible  to  Neith  that  the  conversation 
should  be  tending  where  it  seemed  to  tend.  If  anything 
had  happened  to  break  it  off  at  that  point,  she  would 
have  made  herself  believe  that  the  implication  of  the 
moment  had  been  preposterous.  It  went  on,  however.  It 
began  to  be  penetrated  with  a  delicate  poignancy,  like 
the  perfume  of  the  lilacs. 

"It  was  not  until  I  saw  you  again  that  I  realized,"  he 
said,  "how  much  there  was  to  get.  How  much  I  had 
missed.  As  often  as  anybody  has  a  right  to  think  of  him 
self  in  times  like  these,  I  have  thought  how  I  could  make 
you  understand  also  what  I  have  to  give." 

The  gesture  that  Neith  made  at  this  point  was  purely 
instinctive.  It  came  to  her  instead  of  speech,  as  a  way  of 
saying  that  whatever  he  gave,  the  woman  should  feel 


NO.  26  JAYNE  STREET  141 

honored.  She  found  her  hand  taken  with  a  warm,  com 
pelling  pressure. 

"And  now,"  he  said,  "there  is  n't  time.  I  am  on  my 
way  to  Russia.  But  I  could  not  go  without  letting  you 
know  what  had  been  my  intention." 

Neith  made  an  ineffectual  noise  or  two.  She  recovered 
her  hand  and,  after  an  effort,  her  voice. 

"You  must  realize  that  I  have  not  thought  of  any 
thing  like  this  at  all.  Never  at  all." 

"If  you  could  think  of  it  ...  I  shall  be  away  three  or 
four  months.  I  am  going  for  The  Era,  and  for  Labor. 
But  I  would  do  better  for  everybody  I  represent  if  I 
could  feel  sure  that  you  are  thinking  of  me,  that  you  are 
taking  what  I  say  in  lieu  of  much  that  I  shall  take  the 
first  opportunity  of  saying  on  my  return  ..." 

He  must  have  gained  the  assurance  that  he  wanted 
from  her  silence,  for  he  went  on  presently  telling  her 
where  he  should  be,  and  of  the  feeling  he  had  that  what 
seemed  to  be  coming  to  the  surface  of  the  revolution  in 
Russia  was  not  what  must  finally  come.  He  felt  himself 
called  to  be  the  herald  of  the  new  issue.  So  he  talked, 
getting  possession  of  her  hand  at  last  and  drawing  her 
up  with  him  as  he  rose  to  leave. 

"There  is  so  little  time,"  he  extenuated,  holding  it 
warmly.  "I  have  a  thousand  things  to  do  to-morrow,  but 
if  you  could  dine  with  me?  I'll  call  .  .  .  you  won't  mind 
if  I  can't  be  entirely  sure  of  the  hour."  He  was  utterly 
the  master  of  voice  and  eye  and  every  wooing  inflection. 
Neith  hardly  knew,  when  at  last  he  released  her,  how 


142  NO.  26  JAYNE  STREET 

much  she  had  promised.  Around  all  her  thought  there 
played  a  white  dazzle  of  the  man's  personal  charm  and 
his  destiny. 

X 

§31 

IF  Neith  Schuyler  was  not  the  woman  to  imagine  that 
every  man  interested  in  her  meant  to  propose,  neither 
was  she  the  sort  to  find  herself  in  love  with  any  man  sim 
ply  because  he  had  proposed.  She  found  herself  extraor 
dinarily  stirred  by  Adam  Frear's  declaration  of  love  for 
her,  but  she  did  not  in  the  least  know  whether  this  trem 
ulous  agitation  of  all  the  chords  of  life  into  which  its 
unexpectedness  had  struck  her,  was  any  answer  to  his 
question.  Oddly,  her  first  reaction  into  reality  was  an 
impulse  to  send  for  Eustace  Rittenhouse.  Without  her 
quite  realizing  it,  he  had  been  so  much  in  possession  of 
the  field  of  her  imagination,  so  far  as  her  imagination 
worked  with  the  stuff  of  the  future,  that  for  days  she 
could  not  think  of  him  without  a  hurt  pang  of  his  being 
dispossessed.  She  had  acquiesced  so  completely  in  his 
delight  in  their  mutual  discovery  of  each  other  as  play 
fellows,  he  had  so  made  her  feel  that  his  interest  in  her 
was  something  preciously  worth  protecting,  that  she  had 
the  oddest  impulse  to  cry  out  to  him  that  this  interest 
must  now  be  defended.  She  had  moments  even  of  find 
ing,  in  the  public  excuse  of  his  absence,  reasons  for  de 
fending  it  for  him. 


NO.  26  JAYNE  STREET  143 

Neith  was  not  altogether  without  the  experience  of 
being  sought.  There  had  been  a  winter  in  Rome  when  her 
social  contacts  had  included  an  Italian  count  of  incred 
ibly  ancient  lineage  and  a  fresh  and  romantic  charm  so 
appealing  to  her  still  impressionable  Americanism. 

Count  Mario  had  been  more  than  impressed.  There 
had  been  passages  —  those  delicate,  hedged  attentions 
which  make  the  flavor  of  a  Roman  courtship.  He  had 
gone  so  far,  in  fact,  as  to  make  her  the  tender  of  one  of 
his  hands,  the  other  being  clasped  fast  in  that  of  his 
mother  who  had  no  intention  of  surrendering  it  until  her 
own  had  been  properly  filled  with  the  evidence  that  the 
Signorina  Americana's  dowry  was  more  than  equal  to 
her  son's  lack. 

As  a  matter  of  fact,  it  might  have  been.  There  were 
concessions  which  Mr.  Schuyler  might  have  made  to  a 
fortune  left  to  him  conditionally,  which  he  had  never 
cared  to  make  on  his  own  account.  They  might  easily 
have  been  made  to  his  daughter's  happiness. 

It  is  difficult  for  Europeans  to  understand  that, 
though  Americans  like  money,  they  value  it  chiefly  as 
evidence,  and  outside  of  certain  limited  purlieus  of  New 
York,  have  not  yet  acquired  the  habit  of  liking  it  as  con 
ditions.  If  the  Count  had  been  hers,  Mr.  Schuyler  would 
have  taken  pleasure  in  giving  his  daughter  anything  that 
would  have  enhanced  her  enjoyment  of  him.  But  he  was 
not  buying  counts.  It  was  characteristic  of  them  both 
that  as  soon  as  the  situation  presented  itself  to  them 
in  that  light,  as  it  was  characteristic  of  Count  Mario's 


144  NO.  26  JAYNE  STREET 

family  so  to  present  it,  the  Schuylers  fled  both  him  and 
Rome  with  a  precipitance  that  left  the  Count  rather  in 
the  position  of  dangling  still  from  the  maternal  hand 
clasp,  emptily  in  the  air. 

There  had  been  other  flutters  of  the  matrimonial  op 
portunity;  a  consumptive  young  Englishman  at  Davos 
Platz,  a  middle-aged  Frenchman,  a  widower,  who  took 
to  bringing  her  bouquets  as  an  accessory  to  long  and 
unnecessarily  ceremonious  calls  upon  her  father.  For 
though  Neith's  romanticism  had  been  more  hurt  than 
her  affections  by  the  Roman  incident,  it  had  the  effect 
of  inhibiting  those  tentative  gestures  of  the  mating  in 
stinct  which  youth  so  engagingly  discloses.  It  produced 
on  her  surface  that  close-folded  effect  which  invited  the 
sort  of  offers  from  which  her  father  openly  and  humor 
ously  snatched  her  away. 

There  had  grown  up  a  legend  between  them,  as  often 
as  this  became  necessary,  that  he  was  saving  her  for  the 
ideal  young  American  who,  with  the  glamour  of  some 
conspicuous  achievement  and  with  a  surprising  amount 
of  pocket  money,  was  to  carry  her  away.  That  Eustace 
Rittenhouse  was  much  more  her  father's  ideal  for  her 
than  Adam  Frear,  greatly  as  Mr.  Schuyler  had  admired 
him,  had  unconsciously  softened  her  toward  that  decla 
ration  of  his  intention  which  Eustace  had  somehow  sig 
nally  failed  to  make.  For,  after  all,  it  was  Adam  Frear, 
and  not  Eustace,  who  had  asked  her  to  marry  him.  As 
she  sought  now  for  the  due  proportion  of  her  own  resist 
ance  to  Eustace's  love-making,  it  flashed  upon  her  that 


NO.  26  JAYNE  STREET  145 

her  instinctive  avoidance  of  a  crisis  owed  itself  to  the 
quality  of  Adam  Frear's  unexpressed  six  years'  attach 
ment. 

It  is  doubtful  if  any  man  ever  means  as  much  by  his 
love-making  as  the  woman  gets  out  of  it. 

Love  with  women  like  Neith  Schuyler  is  a  possession, 
the  very  air  and  atmosphere  of  the  landscape  of  the 
heart,  without  which  it  does  not  flourish.  Adam  Frear 
had  told  her  his  love  for  her  began  at  Homburg  six  years 
before,  and  as  by  the  flash  of  that  surprise,  she  had  seen 
it  lighting  the  whole  landscape  of  the  past.  And  just  by 
accepting  the  idea  of  that  love  as  a  continuously  operat 
ing  force  in  her  past,  she  gave  it  a  footing  in  her  present 
which  it  by  no  means  had,  so  far  as  it  involved  reciprocal 
emotion  on  her  own  part. 

She  was  still  trembling  with  the  impact  of  his  desire 
on  her  own  unawakened  heart  when  Adam  called  for  her 
the  next  evening,  a  little  earlier,  rather  than  later,  than 
she  expected  him.  She  had  expected  him  with  embarrass 
ment,  for  she  was  not  yet  able  to  think  of  him  as  hers, 
and  he  had  so  far  refrained  from  the  possessive  gesture 
that  might  have  made  her  his  in  fact.  But  there  was  that 
in  his  manner,  as  soon  as  she  had  ushered  him  into  the 
half -formal  and  wholly  charming  front  room,  of  having 
happily  escaped  to  her  from  multitudinous  perplexities, 
that  gave  her  the  note  not  only  for  that  occasion,  but  led 
like  the  call  of  a  bird  up  gentle  by-paths  of  future  secu 
rity  and  rest.  She  could  see  that  if  she  married  him  there 
would  be  many  evenings  when  he  would  come  to  her 


146  NO.  26  JAYNE  STREET 

like  that,  evenings  when  the  happiest  thing  she  could  do 
for  him  would  be  not  to  share  his  responsibilities,  but  to 
forget  them  for  him. 

There  are  women  to  whom  the  art  of  being  restful 
comes  as  a  kind  of  studied  duplicity,  one  of  the  feminine 
bag  of  tricks  by  which  men  are  caught  and  kept.  But  to 
Neith  Schuyler  it  had  come  as  part  of  the  necessity  of 
affection,  in  the  long  semi-invalid  life  of  her  father,  a 
thing  which  in  giving  brought  relief  to  her  nature  like 
the  mother's  giving  of  milk.  She  found  herself  at  once 
eased  of  her  embarrassment  in  supplying  Adam  Frear 
with  the  needed  quarter  of  an  hour  of  release  from 
the  hurry  of  his  preparations. 

"I  hope,"  he  said,  after  an  interval  of  those  momen 
tously  trifling  exchanges  which  engage  the  attention  of 
even  prospective  lovers,  "that  you  won't  mind  meeting 
some  friends  of  mine  at  dinner.  Russians,"  he  said, 
"political  refugees  who  have  much  to  tell  me  about 
things  I  must  see  there,  and  persons  I  must  interview. 
I  have  asked  them  to  meet  me  at  a  restaurant  near  here. 
I  should  have  liked  you  to  see  them  in  their  own  homes 
on  the  East  Side,  but  the  time  is  too  short." 

"I  should  have  liked  that,  too,"  Neith  agreed.  "I  have 
been  seeing  the  East  Side  with  Mrs.  Kendries,  a  little. 
What  surprises  me  about  it,  except  for  the  scale,  the  key, 
how  like  it  is  to  our  Side." 

"I  could  show  you  a  part  of  it  that  is  not  only  unlike 
ours,  but  has  its  whole  interest  and  attention  centered 
on  something  that  scarcely  takes  into  account  the  exist- 


NO.  26  JAYNE  STREET  147 

ence  of  ours,  except,  perhaps,  as  something  due  to  dis 
appear.  Like  a  dew,  like  a  slime  rather,  when  the  sun  of 
their  revolution  appears." 

"But  I  thought  it  had,  the  Russian  Revolution,  I 
mean?" 

"A  revolution,"  he  admitted.  "Did  I  ever  speak  to 
you  of  a  man  called  Trotzky  — "  He  left  it  hanging  in 
the  air.  "I  wish,"  he  returned  to  the  personal  issue,  "I 
might  have  had  the  evening  alone  with  you." 

"But  you'll  be  coming  back.  You  don't  intend  stay 
ing  there?"  And  this  light  admission  of  a  possibility  of 
evenings  to  come,  spent  in  his  company,  lightened  him 
like  wine. 

"Oh,  I'm  coming  back!"  he  cried  boyishly.  "Nothing 
could  keep  me  from  coming  back!" 

§32 

They  went  out  presently  into  the  street  where  the  \/ 
electric  lamps  nibbled  at  the  twilight.  Somewhere  back 
of  the  Square  and  in  the  neighborhood  of  the  EL,  they 
found  a  passage  leading  between  irreconcilable  back 
walls  into  a  narrow  court,  and  a  stair  that  went  up 
from  that  to  a  floor  of  what  had  been  little  cubicles  of 
rooms,  all  let  in  together  by  the  removal  of  half  walls 
and  partitions,  to  become  one  of  those  eating-places  so 
popular  in  the  Village,  where  the  excellence  and  cheap 
ness  of  the  cuisine  made  up  for  inadequacies  of  service. 

The  place  was  liberally  brightened  with  yellow  and 
purple  paint,  and  at  the  scattered  tables  Neith  recognized 


148  NO.  26  JAYNE  STREET 

the  flamboyant  Village  types,  cheerfully  opposing  their 
youth  and  inexperience  to  the  drab  indifference  of  the 
city.  It  was  only  a  few  moments  after  they  had  seated 
themselves  at  a  table  set  for  five,  that  the  Russians  came 
in,  two  men  and  a  woman.  The  woman  Neith  understood, 
for  though  she  had  the  Slavic  features  and  spoke  the 
tongue,  she  had  everywhere  about  her  the  unmistakable 
savor  of  race  which  clings  to  the  least  drop  of  Hebrew 
blood. 

Neith's  work  with  Mrs.  Kendries  had  made  her  fa 
miliar  with  the  short-limbed,  high-breasted  figure  of  the 
female  compacted  by  the  exigencies  of  race  to  the  great 
est  economy  of  function.  She  was  tolerably  acquainted 
with  the  quick  flare  of  temperament  and  the  complex  of 
persecution,  bred  of  pogroms  and  ostracisms. 

But  the  men  were  new  to  her,  strange  as  Harvard 
graduates  who  had  learned  their  Russian  in  the  back 
alleys  of  Petrograd,  and  worked  at  the  garment-cutting 
trades  for  a  livelihood,  might  have  seemed  to  the  former 
inhabitants  of  the  Winter  Palace.  Their  oddly  imperfect 
English,  their  enormous  grasp  of  economic  details,  left 
her  far  behind.  And  they  left  her  without  any  of  that 
polite  compunction  which  characterizes  the  American 
male  in  his  intellectual  flights,  without  any  effort  to  lend 
a  wing  to  her  slight  attempts  tof follow.  She  was  thankful 
that  in  their  wake,  evidently  of  their  party,  but  quite 
willing  to  be  excluded  from  it  so  far  as  Adam  Frear  was 
concerned,  came  two  people  who  found  themselves 
happy  and  important  in  being  remembered  by  her.  She 


NO.  26  JAYNE  STREET  149 

was  pleased  when  Adam  insisted  on  their  pulling  up 
another  table  and  adding  themselves  to  the  number  of 
his  guests. 

"Isn't  it  simply  wonderful!"  breathed  the  girl  at 
sight  of  Neith.  "Our  meeting  here  like  this,  and  in  these 
rooms !  They  used  to  be  slave  quarters,  you  know,  when 
this  was  a  fashionable  neighborhood.  They  say  there  are 
staples  in  the  basement  walls  —  But  of  course  you  don't 
remember  us." 

"Oh,  but  I  do  remember  you,"  Neith  insisted  when 
she  had  freed  herself  from  the  effusive  and  rather  clammy 
handshake  of  Hippolyte,  and  to  prove  it  she  hazarded, 
"I  suppose  your  school  is  out  for  the  summer  or  you 
would  n't  be  here." 

"I'm  out,"  Miss  Comyns  nodded.  "I'm  shirt-waist 
finishing." 

"She's  demonstrating  the  principle  of  self-determi 
nation  in  personal  conduct,"  Hippolyte  explained. 

"  Dear  me,  how  formidable  that  sounds !  What  did  you 
do?" 

"It's  what  I  would  n't  do.  They  wanted  me  to  teach 
the  children  to  promise  to  obey  the  laws  of  the  country." 

"Well,"  Neith  temporized,  "what  are  laws  for?  " 

"But,  Miss  Schuyler,  you  don't  believe  in  obedience, 
do  you!"  The  greenish  eyes  expanded  slightly.  Miss  Co 
myns  was  on  the  verge  of  being  scandalized.  "I  could  n't 
make  children  promise  to  obey  laws  that  I  know  to 
be  stupid  and  unjust.  Would  you  obey  a  law  that  you 
knew  was  bod?" 


150  NO.  26  JAYNE  STREET 

"  It  had  n't  occurred  to  me,"  said  Neith  with  a  sudden 
rush  of  genuine  humility,  "that  I  was  able  to  judge  in 
most  cases."  She  was  continually  amazed  at  the  literal- 
ness  of  the  democratic  premise  of  these  people. 

She  had  been  trying  to  follow  the  conversation  be 
tween  Adam  Frear  and  his  other  guests.  It  appeared  that 
American  recognition  of  the  present  revolution  in  Rus 
sia  was  about  to  be  discredited  because  the  United 
States,  which  approved  of  it,  had  unjustly  convicted  a 
man  named  Mooney  of  something  or  other  which  Neith 
did  not  remember  having  heard  specified. 

Evidently  word  of  Adam  Frear 's  imminent  departure 
had  circulated  freely  among  the  radical  group,  for  one 
and  another  of  them  appeared  during  the  evening  and 
claimed  a  share  of  his  attention.  Most  of  what  was  said 
escaped  Neith's  understanding.  But  insensibly  she  began 
to  be  penetrated  with  a  feeling  of  reality  in  the  sum 
of  social  forces  which  hitherto  she  had  heard  as  the  in 
choate  clamor  of  a  world  in  unwonted  motion.  Whatever 
social  movement  Adam  Frear  subscribed  to,  and  she  was 
by  no  means  sure  of  its  name  or  content,  it  had  a  force 
and  direction  as  yet  unmeasured  in  any  terms  that  she 
was  able  to  handle.  It  came  over  her  floodingly  as,  in 
terms  of  her  known  world,  unmeasurable. 

One  of  Adam's  guests,  pallid-faced,  bearded,  the  eyes 
wjde  and  spurting  blue  fire,  the  nose  jutting  sharply, 
pointed,  but  a  trifle  thick  at  the  nostrils,  leaned  across 
the  table  to  him. 

"When  the  time  comes  we  will  act,"  he  declared.  "We 


NO.  26  JAYNE  STREET  151 

will  act  in  whatever  way  the  time  makes  open  to  us. 
You  talk,  Adam  Frear,  of  a  bloodless  revolution  because 
you  are  an  American;  you  have  not  seen  blood.  I  tell  you 
he  is  not  a  true  revolutionist  who  will  not  have  a  revolu 
tion  unless  it  comes  gently.  Tell  the  comrades  that  for 
me.  Tell  them  that  when  it  comes,  the  true  revolution, 
that  the  Proletariat  of  the  world  will  be  with  us.  The 
American  Proletariat  will  not  follow  the  lead  of  its 
Bourgeoisie.  It  will  go  with  us  against  the  Bourgeoisie. 
.  .  .  Tell  them  from  me  that  when  the  true  revolution 
comes  there  will  be  blood  and  there  will  be  Terror  .  .  . 
did  not  the  Bourgeoisie  use  Terror  when  it  suited  their 
purpose  .  .  . 

"I  tell  you,  Adam  Prear,  that  this  idea  of  yours  that 
the  Russian  Revolution  is  to  be  a  smooth  and  orderly 
progress,  is  a  dream,  an  American  dream  ...  I  tell  you 
that  a  revolution  is  not  a  revolution  unless  it  breaks  the 
resistance  of  the  opposing  class  ..." 

There  was  more  of  this,  but  it  was  not  this  that  struck 
chillingly  to  Neith's  soul.  It  was  the  sudden,  the  com 
plete  realization  that  to  Adam  Frear,  to  the  Kendries 
with  their  wholesome  Americanism,  to  the  young  editor 
with  the  Presbyterian  background  and  the  New  England 
family  name,  it  meant  other  things  and  more  things 
than  it  was  possible  to  fathom. 

She  made  swiftly  and  instinctively  a  movement  to 
ward  Adam  to  find  in  the  renewal  of  the  personal  rela 
tion  a  surcease  from  alarm.  He  looked  down  at  her.  Sud 
denly  there  was  no  revolution,  only  a  warm,  excluding 


152  NO.  26  JAYNE  STREET 

intimacy,  from  which  she  almost  as  instantly  detached 
herself  to  find  her  perceptions  of  Miss  Comyns  enlarged 
to  the  point  of  a  swift,  nameless  community  of  sex.  She 
was  sure  that  Sadie  was  engaged  to  Hippolyte  if  not  — 
as  it  oddly  occurred  to  her  —  already  married. 

§33 

"Isn't  Trotzky  wonderful!"  Miss  Comyns  had  ac 
cepted  the  moment  of  confidence  for  what  it  was  worth. 
"He's  going  over,  you  know.  Hippolyte  is  helping  to 
raise  the  money.  Of  course,  Hippolyte  is  a  philosophical 
anarchist  and  Trotzky  is  a  Socialist.  But  it  all  brings  us 
nearer.  Hippolyte  says  that  Adam  Frear  is  an  Anarchist, 
but  he  does  n't  know  it.  That 's  why  he  is  opposed  to 
force." 

"Oh,"  murmured  Neith,  "can  one  be  an  Anarchist 
and  not  know  it?  You'll  think  I  am  very  ignorant,  but 
I  had  always  associated  Anarchism  with  force.  Bombs, 
you  know." 

"That's  the  way  the  Bourgeoisie  look  at  it.  You  see," 
the  pale  cat's  eyes  widened,  "a  bomb  is  just  a  sort  of 
medium  of  expression." 

"I  see,"  Neith  said;  and  for  the  moment  she  most 
extraordinarily  did  see  at  least  what  the  little  shirt 
waist  finisher,  who  wished  to  be  an  Intellectual,  meant 
by  it.  She  also  saw  that  the  girl  was  looking  at  Hippol 
yte  with  an  unmistakable  tender  possessiveness.  Hippol 
yte  himself  was  hanging  on  the  words  of  the  second  of 
Adam  Frear's  guests,  a  broad  man,  flushed  and  thick- 


NO.  26  JAYNE  STREET  153 

lipped,  who  had  been  going  farther  in  his  identification 
of  the  most  hated  phases  of  Capitalism  with  his  adopted 
country's  government,  than  the  woman  member  of  their 
party  found  advisable. 

"Andre,  Andre!"  she  warned,  with  the  rising  note  of 
hysteria,  "they  have  their  spies  everywhere!"  She  put 
one  of  her  fat  hands  over  his,  protectingly. 

"Do  you  believe  in  marriage,  Miss  Schuyler?"  Miss 
Comyns  found  some  relativity  in  the  question  which 
escaped  Miss  Schuyler.  "I  mean  do  you  believe  in  the 
bourgeois  contract?  Anarchists  don't,  you  know." 

"Not  even  the  philosophical  ones?" 

"I  was  brought  up  orthodox,  myself,"  confided  Miss 
Comyns,  "but  Hippolyte  was  always  an  Anarchist. 
You've  been  so  nice  to  me.  You  asked  me  to  come  to  see 
you,  you  know.  I  thought  I'd  better  tell  you.  Hippolyte 
and  I  aren't  married;  we're  just  living  together.  Of 
course,  I  know  if  you  are  Adam  Frear's  friend  you 
could  n't  be  bourgeois  — " 

"I've  never  discussed  the  subject  with  him." 

"Anybody  can  see  you've  got  your  own  opinion. 
That's  why  I  like  you.  Hippolyte,  too.  Hippolyte  thinks 
you  are  just  wonderful.  But  he  would,  anyway,  the 
way  he  admires  Adam  Frear.  I  thought  you  ought  to 
know." 

"  I  shall  be  very  glad  to  have  you  come  to  see  me.  And 
bring  your  —  and  bring  Hippolyte." 

"Oh,  yes,  of  course  I  call  him  my  husband,"  Miss 
Comyns  supplied  joyously.  "We're  perfectly  happy!" 


154  NO.  26  JAYNE  STREET 

Tears  blinded  suddenly  her  greenish  eyes.  "You're  too 
wonderful!" 

§34 

Neith  did  not  try  to  talk  of  her  impressions  of  the 
evening  on  the  way  home.  She  was  relieved  to  find  that 
Adam  did  not  require  it  of  her.  Some  notion  that  he  had 
taken  her  to  that  place,  had  shown  her  these  people  as 
an  earnest  of  the  sort  of  thing  a  life  with  him  might  hold 
for  her,  had  flitted  through  her  mind  from  time  to  time 
and  disappeared  before  his  evident  lack  of  interest  in 
any  surprises  the  evening  may  have  had  for  her.  Either 
he  took  her  attitude  altogether  for  granted,  or  the  eve 
ning  had  meant  less  to  him  than  it  seemed,  a  mere  kalei 
doscope  incident  in  the  life  of  a  sociological  journalist,  as 
he  had  once  called  himself  in  answer  to  some  light  query 
of  hers. 

He  looked  at  his  watch  as  they  came  to  her  rooms 
again. 

"I  have  to  meet  a  man  who  is  coming  up  from  Wash 
ington  with  my  passports,"  he  said.  "You  must  n't  hold 
against  me  that  I  have  so  little  time  to  give  to  proving 
to  you  how  completely  I  am  leaving  my  hope  of  future 
happiness  in  your  hands." 

"Ah"  —  she  met  him  on  the  same  plane  of  gentle 
gravity  —  "I  should  do  scant  justice  to  your  choice  of 
me  if  I  thought  you  had  any  doubt  of  my  understanding 
how  pressed  you  are  for  time,  and  how  important  the 
business  is  that  calls  you." 


NO.  26  JAYNE  STREET  155 

"If  you  could  only  understand  how  sure  I  am  in  my 
choice.  How  utterly  sure."  His  gaze  roved  tenderly  over 
her  face,  her  soft  folded  hair,  the  charming  feminine 
intricacy  of  her  dress.  He  took  her  hand. 

After  a  moment  or  two  Neith  found  the  courage  to 
face  him  fairly.  "Whatever  comes  of  this,"  she  said,  "I 
want  you  to  understand  that  I  am  honored,  that  never 
in  my  life  have  I  felt  so  honored." 

"It's  more  than  honor  that  I  want,"  he  told  her,  as 
without  force,  but  with  a  slow,  tender  compulsion  he 
took  her  in  his  arms  and  kissed  her. 


BOOK  III 


XI 

§35 

IT  was  fortunate  for  Miss  Schuyler's  resuscitating  ap 
preciation  of  her  country  that,  between  the  Declaration 
of  War  and  the  successful  operation  of  the  Universal 
Service  Act,  she  had  a  pressing  personal  issue  to  occupy 
her  mind.  There  were  others,  who  as  the  slow  peasant 
stuff  which  is  the  warp  of  American  life,  began  to  mani 
fest  through  the  woof  of  easy  sentiment  and  easy  living 
which  masks  the  American  people  from  themselves, 
like  Neith,  were  only  saved  by  their  personal  preoccu 
pations  from  mortification. 

As  it  was,  mortification  was  in  the  air.  Politicians,  the 
Press,  rushed  about  making  the  early  republican  ges 
tures  of  patriotism  and  world  Democracy.  There  were 
bands  and  banners.  None  of  which  quite  concealed  from 
the  honest,  the  suspicion  that  the  moral  aloofness  on 
which  America  had  prided  herself  for  the  past  three  years 
had  more  than  a  touch  of  doltish  vacuity  of  purpose.  Ac 
customed  to  take  themselves  at  the  measure  of  their 
surface  shrewdness,  stripe  of  the  dominant  peasant 
strain,  there  were  many  Americans  as  the  national  con 
sciousness  shambled  itself  together  its  complacent  me 
diocrity,  flushed  to  something  that  was  close  akin  to 
shame. 

In  spite  of  a  tremendous  milling  about  and  insisting 


160  NO.  26  JAYNE  STREET 

that  the  country  should  get  together,  there  was  no  very 
clear  idea,  after  all  this  period  of  bystanding,  what  they 
were  to  get  together  about. 

And  through  it  all  there  was  a  rather  tight-jawed 
younger  generation,  not  by  any  means  springing  to 
arms  overnight  in  the  expected  millions,  but  demanding 
stubbornly  to  be  shown,  exhibiting  something  menac 
ingly  like  the  ungenerous  attitude  which,  as  she  had 
seen  the  British  seeing  it,  had  driven  Neith  in  an  un 
reasoning  accession  of  loyalty  to  her  native  shore.  Oddly 
enough  it  was  this  younger  generation,  represented  for 
the  moment  in  Neith's  circle  by  Lutra  Dunham's  nine 
teen-year-old  brother,  Carter,  that  brought  her  at  last 
a  saving  sense  of  the  situation. 

The  Kendries  were  among  the  first  of  the  Socialists 
to  accept  the  war  for  a  fact.  They  made  up  for  the 
concession  by  a  hot,  wholesale  opposition  to  any  form 
of  conscription.  Like  all  doctrinaires,  the  Kendries  were 
perfectly  sure  of  the  moral  bearings  of  everything.  Even 
Fleeta  had  her  moments  of  doubt  whether  or  not  a  thing 
proposed  was  "radical,"  and  if  so,  was  it  sufficiently 
radical  to  warrant  a  break  with  your  former  self  for  the 
sake  of  being  done.  Not  that  Fleeta  had  any  doubts 
about  conscription.  She  was  all  the  more  sure,  since  her 
Peace  Association  had  recently  been  closed  by  the  police, 
in  view  of  certain  unspecified  contributions  to  its  funds, 
that  conscription  was  only  an  insidious  form  of  slavery. 

She  was  at  present  completely  occupied  in  planning 
to  take  advantage,  in  the  radical  interest,  of  tb£  riot 


NO.  26  JAYNE  STREET  1G1 

that  was  to  occur  on  the  first  attempt  to  enforce  the 
Universal  Service  Act.  She  had  even  momentarily  allied 
herself  with  the  lady  who  was  circulating  a  non-fighting 
pledge,  and  had  made  arrangements  to  surrender  the 
lease  of  her  apartment  in  anticipation  of  being  sent  to 
jail.  An  anticipation  which,  rather  to  her  regret,  was 
never  fulfilled. 

It  was,  therefore,  to  Lutra  Dunham  and  her  circle  an 
entirely  simple  matter  that  her  brother  should  enlist  if 
he  wished.  And  if  he  did  n't  wish,  to  expect  quite  as 
interesting  a  time  with  the  Authorities.  It  remained  for 
Neith,  who  was  not  at  all  sure  of  things,  and  at  the  same 
time  had  a  charming  way  with  boys,  to  become  the 
recipient  of  young  Carter  Dunham's  perplexed  confi 
dence. 

He  had  come  up  from  some  place  of  vague  and  ab 
sorbing  interest  called  "The  Tech,"  shaking  his  problem 
in  his  teeth  as  a  terrier  shakes  a  rat,  quite  plainly  driven 
by  the  attraction  of  war  for  youth,  and  as  plainly  fight 
ing  off  the  emotional  appeal  of  bands  and  posters  and 
the  calling  flap  of  flags.  What  he  wanted,  and  what 
Lutra  Dunham,  with  her  brisk  doctrine  of  self-determi 
nation,  could  n't  help  him  to,  was  a  clear  ground  for 
deciding  his  own  participation  in  the  war,  untouched  by 
what  in  his  more  lucid  moments  he  characterized  as 
"bunk." 

It  seemed,  at  the  first  go,  an  unlovely  attitude  for 
youth.  One  expects  always  of  the  young  a  certain  high 
regardlessness,  the  want  of  which  in  Carter  Dunham 


162  NO.  26  JAYNE  STREET 

made  it  particularly  difficult  for  Neith  to  face,  for  the 
sake  of  getting  to  the  bottom  of  it,  his  attitude  of  watch 
ing  over  his  shoulder  to  see  what  the  other  fellows  were 
going  to  do. 

Put  this,  as  she  had  put  it  at  its  kindliest  to  Adam 
Frear,  as  a  passion  for  alikeness,  it  was  still  an  unlovely 
attitude. 

But  the  moment  she  had  faced  it,  one  night  when 
they  were  coming  home  from  a  showing  of  war  "movies " 
together,  she  found  herself  rewarded.  They  had  been 
confronted,  as  they  got  down  from  the  green  bus  in  the 
Square,  with  the  tail-end  of  some  sort  of  Italo-American 
demonstration. 

"That's  all  right,  of  course,"  Carter  Dunham  burst 
out,  as  they  had  paused  for  a  moment  to  admit  the  thrill 
of  seeing  the  Roman  Fasces  and  the  S.P.Q.R.  set  up  in 
,  an  American  plaza,  around,  of  all  things  in  the  world,  the 
statue  of  Garibaldi.  "It's  fine,  this  getting  together  with 
everybody.  Only  —  why  did  we  have  to  wait  until  some 
body  landed  us  one,  to  find  out  that  it  is  fine?  And  if  it  is 
as  fine  as  all  that  why  don't  we  just  do  it?  All  this  blurb 
about  patriotism.  And  heroes.  Yah!  Who  wants  to  be  a 
hero?"  He  scuffed  the  gravel  with  his  shoe. 

"I  was  up  to  the  camp  the  other  day,"  he  went  on 
presently.  "There's  some  of  the  fellows  from  the  Tech 
there.  They  were  teaching  them  some  kind  of  a  college 
yell  while  they  were  learning  to  stick  Germans  in  the 
stomach  .  .  .  Not  that  I  mind  sticking  Germans.  When 
I  think  what  they  did  in  Belgium."  Then,  with  a  sudden 


NO.  26  JAYNE  STREET  163 

extraordinary  flash  of  lucidity:  "That's  the  way  the 
Kaiser's  gang  got  them  to  do  what  they  did,  feeling  like 
movie  heroes. 

"Anyway,  if  it's  got  to  be  done,  why  is  n't  it  just  like 
anything  else?  Like  street  cleaning,"  catching  the  figure 
from  a  group  of  white  wings  moving  across  the  Square. 
"  Who  wants  all  those  paunchy  old  guys  from  Wall 
Street  clapping  us  on  the  back?"  He  burst  out  again: 
"What  business  they  got  putting  it  up  to  us  .  .  .  fellows 
like  me!" 

"I  see  what  you  mean,"  said  Neith.  She  did  n't,  quite, 
but  she  wished  him  to  go  on  talking.  She  guided  him 
deftly  to  an  empty  bench.  Young  Dunham  wanted  to 
talk. 

"The  other  day,"  he  said,  after  a  moment  of  discon 
tented  silence,  "I  saw  the  Sixty-Ninth  marching  down 
the  Avenue.  There  was  a  woman  waving  her  handker 
chief.  With  a  dog  under  her  arm.  Diamonds,  too!  What 
business  was  it  of  hers?'9  He  kicked  the  gravel  again. 
"I  don't  mind  —  going,  you  know,  but  I  don't  want  to 
put  in  a  year  or  two  getting  all  shot  up,  just  to  come 
back  and  see  a  fat  woman  with  a  dog  waving  a  handker 
chief  at  me." 

"Ah,  I  do  see  what  you  mean,"  said  Neith. 

"It's  more  than  I  can  get  Lute  to  see.  She  thinks  it's 
just  a  question  of  Militarism.  If  you  believe  in  it  you  go, 
and  if  you  don't,  you  call  yourself  a  conscientious  ob 
jector  and  stick  on  at  your  old  job.  But  it  is  n't  that.  Not 
with  me.  If  this  thing  has  got  to  be  done"  —  he  took  a 


164  NO.  26  JAYNE  STREET 

fresh  hold  on  his  grievance  —  "what  they  call  'Making 
the  world  safe  for  Democracy,'  I  don't  care  how  it's 
done!  Fighting,  or  any  old  way.  But  I  don't  want  to  lose 
an  arm  or  a  leg,  or  get  myself  all  full  of  —  cooties "  — 
he  dropped  his  voice  in  that  instinctive  avoidance  by  the 
American  man  of  the  mention  of  any  kind  of  unclean- 
ness  to  a  woman  —  "and  then  find  that  I  had  just 
picked  myself  out  for  a  Grand-Stand  Play." 

§36 

"You're  wrong  about  this  conscription  business, 
Lutra,"  Neith  had  said  to  Mrs.  Kendries  at  the  first 
opportunity  afterward.  They  had  already  come  to  first 
names,  by  virtue  of  Mrs.  Kendries's  being  one  of  the 
Dunhams  of  Stamford.  "I  am  not  sure  of  much,  but  I 
am  of  that.  It  is  n't  fair  to  put  the  responsibility  of  en 
listing  on  our  boys  by  working  on  their  feelings.  It 's  just 
a  form  of  shirking  on  our  part."  And  she  tried  to  tell  her 
about  the  talk  with  Carter. 

It  was  not  easy  for  Mrs.  Kendries  to  get  away  from 
the  dogmas  of  her  class.  She  said,  "What  becomes  of 
self-determination  if  we  make  the  decision  for  them?" 

"What  becomes  of  it  in  any  case?  How  much  self- 
determination  is  there  left  to  a  sensitive  young  man  with 
the  whole  country  'blurbing,'  as  Carter  puts  it,  about 
patriotism.  What  they  did  to  youngsters  in  England  to 
persuade  them  to  enlist  was  cruel.  Cruel!  And  I  don't  feel 
so  sure  about  self-determination.  Is  n't  the  Kaiser  about 
the  most  self-determined  person  you  know? 


NO.  26  JAYNE  STREET  165 

"Rose  Matlock  is  right,"  she  said,  with  new  convic 
tion,  "  we  are  n't  getting  any  forwarder  by  setting  up  an 
autocracy  of  personal  feeling  in  place  of  the  old  autoc 
racy  of  authority.  We've  got  to  find  some  sort  of  a 
Democratic  medium  in  which  the  personal  equation  can 
be  solved. 

"I  wonder,"  she  speculated  aloud,  "if  that  is  n't  what 
Adam  Frear  means  when  he  talks  about  the  livingness  of 
politics." 

And  as  she  said  that  there  passed  over  her  mind  a  thin 
shadow  of  grayness,  too  insubstantial  for  her  to  recog 
nize  it  as  cast  by  the  crossing  of  the  views  of  Rose  Mat- 
lock  and  Adam  Frear  in  her  mind,  and  the  subtle  sug 
gestion  in  their  alikeness  of  some  common  source.  It 
lasted  long  enough  for  her  to  miss  the  first  part  of  Mrs. 
Kendries's  answer  and  to  catch  only  at  "I'd  like  to 
know  what  you  mean  by  a  Democratic  medium." 

"I  don't  know,"  Neith  admitted:  "I  don't  know  what 
I  mean,  but  I  have  a  notion  I'm  going  to  find  out." 

That  formless  sense  of  things  due  to  make  themselves 
plain  in  some  manner  not  yet  disclosed,  things  of  tre 
mendous  and  unspecified  spiritual  value,  was  the  state 
of  mind  in  which  the  greater  part  of  America  made  its 
entry  into  the  war. 

Then  the  Universal  Service  Act  went  into  effect,  and 
practically  none  of  the  things  happened  that  had  been 
predicted.  On  the  contrary,  there  was  a  marked  release 
of  the  social  tension.  The  war  emerged  from  the  tawdry 
trappings  of  sentimentalism  as  an  adventure  in  Social 


166  NO.  26  JAYNE  STREET 

Consent.  Men  came  forward  to  do  their  part  as  they 
were  required.  All  that  remained  of  the  brief  spirit  of 
national  heroics  was  in  youngsters  like  Carter  Dunham 
—  who,  after  reviling  all  the  most  sacred  precedents  of 
sentimentalism,  had  gone  off  suddenly  and  signed  up  for 
the  Artillery  —  now  engaged  in  making  the  new  con 
scripts  unhappy  on  the  basis  of  being  himself  a  volun 
tarily  enlisted  man. 

"  We  ought  to  have  known  all  along,"  said  Neith  to 
Mrs.  Kendries,  "that  that  is  the  way  it  would  work. 
Everybody  doing  his  share  because  it  is  his  share 
and  not  because  of  something  he  happens  to  feel  about 
it." 

"I  ought,"  her  friend  admitted,  "after  all  I  have  said 
about  Socialism.  Carry  it  into  ordinary  life  and  con 
scription  is  Socialism,  community  work  distributed 
among  those  who  are  best  fit.  Only  —  I  can't  reconcile  it 
with  self-determination  to  have  other  people  deciding 
whether  or  not  you  are  fit.  It  works  with  the  Army,  it 
sounds  as  if  it  would  work  with  other  kinds  of  work.  But 
suppose  they  should  try  to  do  that  with  marriage  — 
and  child-bearing.  Child-bearing  is  going  to  be  an  acute 
problem,  you  know,  after  this  war.  Are  we  going  to  have 
conscription  of  mothers?" 

"Oh,  let's  finish  the  war  first,"  pleaded  Neith. 
"That's  as  far  as  I've  got." 

"That's  a  great  deal  farther  than  most  people,"  con 
tributed  Fleeta,  who  was  present,  considerably  dashed 
in  her  hopes  of  the  Social  Revolution  by  the  general 


NO.  26  JAYNE  STREET  167 

acceptance  of  conscription.  And  as  Fleeta's  statement  of 
the  case  seemed  to  be  the  accepted  one,  they  let  it  go  at 
that. 

§37 

All  this  time  the  thought  of  Adam  Frear  played  about 
the  gates  of  Neith's  private  decisions  like  an  angel  with 
a  flaming  sword.  So  far  the  sword  had  not  touched  her; 
it  only  played  and  flashed  across  the  road  to  every  con 
clusion.  It  warmed  and  dazzled;  at  night  she  heard  the 
singing  blade  through  all  her  dreams. 

Adam  Frear  had  told  her  that  he  had  begun  to  love 
her  six  years  before.  He  could  hardly  have  done  better 
for  himself  than  to  tell  her,  and  to  leave  it  at  that.  It 
had  the  effect  of  flashing  the  sword  back  through  her 
past.  She  saw  it  now  as  playing  between  her  and  all 
possible  suitors.  It  was  across  that  invisible  barrier  of 
Adam's  unguessed  love  she  had  looked,  only  looked  at 
Eustace  Rittenhouse. 

In  the  white  blaze  of  that  six  years  of  secret  devotion, 
the  figure  of  Eustace  with  his  undeclared  attachment 
faded  out. 

It  was  natural  that  Neith  should  think  of  Adam 
Frear's  interest  in  her  as  existing  at  its  present  level  all 
those  years.  She  knew  as  little  of  man's  love  as  could  be 
expected  of  a  delicately  nurtured  young  woman.  She  had 
seen  her  father's  lovely  and  unwavering  devotion  to  the 
memory  of  her  mother,  and  her  inexperience  did  not 
admit  the  item  of  her  father's  invalidism  in  the  measure 


168  NO.  26  JAYNE  STREET 

of  his  fidelity,  nor  allow  for  the  circumstance  that  his 
love  for  her  young  mother  had  been  sealed  and  perfected 
in  marriage. 

If  it  had  taken  Adam  Frear  more  than  the  year  since 
his  wife's  death  to  discover  her,  there  was  the  war  with 
its  confusions  and  distractions  to  extenuate.  He  had 
at  least  lost  no  time  in  letting  her  know  the  state  of  his 
affections  the  moment  he  had  found  her.  That  she  did 
not  herself  come  as  speedily  to  a  conclusion  about  him 
and  their  future  together,  was  very  much  owing  to  the 
lack  of  material  for  the  setting  forth  of  that  future  in  her 
mind. 

It  had  been  different  with  Eustace.  The  very  ease  with 
which  she  could  place  him,  the  home  he  would  make  for 
her,  the  faces  about  their  table,  had  been  part  of  his 
claim  on  her  attention.  She  could  make  no  such  picture 
of  herself  and  Adam  Frear.  And  yet  that  was  a  part  of  his 
charm  for  her,  the  unexpectedness,  the  beckoning  of  the 
unguessed  adventure.  That,  and  his  having  kissed  her. 
For  the  kiss  was  not  something  that  he  had  asked  for 
nor  she  given.  It  had  simply  happened.  She  had  known 
the  instant  before  what  he  was  about  to  do,  and  had  not 
been  able  to  make  any  motion  either  of  consent  or  rejec 
tion.  And  in  that  kiss,  the  memory  of  which  shivered 
through  her  like  slow,  sweet  fire,  Neith  Schuyler  had 
found  that  intimation  of  overshadowing  personal  ab 
sorption  which  is  the  soul  of  love  for  women. 

It  was  at  this  point,  in  her  attempts  to  rationalize  the 
ground  either  for  accepting  or  rejecting  Adam  Frear, 


NO.  26  JAYNE  STREET  169 

that  all  her  thoughts  about  him  ended.  He  was  so  much 
in  her  mind  as  a  symbol  of  destiny  and  so  little  yet  as  a 
person,  that  she  had  not  been  touched  to  anxiety  even 
by  what  Van  Harwood  had  to  tell  her,  how  partly  by 
luck  and  partly  by  connivance  of  the  Powers,  Frear  had 
been  able  to  slip  through  to  Russia  by  way  of  Scandi 
navia.  The  only  thought  about  it  in  her  mind  was  that  he 
would  thus  cut  off  some  weeks  of  the  time  he  would  be 
absent  from  her.  She  had  no  dreams  of  submarines  or 
mines,  no  thrill  of  sharing  in  his  behalf  the  common 
adventure  of  war. 

She  read  his  book,  "Creative  Industry,"  still  with  a 
curious  feeling  of  unreality.  One  by  one,  with  almost  a 
sensation  of  indelicacy,  as  though  she  had  secret  access 
to  his  rooms  and  was  engaged  in  the  business  of  rummag 
ing  trunks  and  opening  bureau  drawers,  she  collected 
and  read  his  scattered  articles  in  newspapers  and  maga 
zines.  Adam  Frear  hardly  wrote  so  well  as  he  talked;  or 
perhaps  it  had  been  the  spark  struck  by  his  personality 
from  hers  that  had  illumined.  It  was  only  by  reflection, 
as  though  they  took  their  vitality  from  the  association 
with  his  image  in  her  mind,  that  the  things  she  read 
leaped  into  life.  They  did  so  leap  occasionally  with  the 
poignancy  which  gave  them  rank  with  personal  experi 
ence.  Years  afterward,  as  she  was  to  recall  the  steady 
reach  of  her  spirit  toward  Adam  Frear,  she  was  not  al 
ways  able  to  say  whether  she  had  read  these  things  in  his 
work  or  had  caught  them  from  him  in  those  golden  mo 
ments  of  exchange,  to  the  renewal  of  which  she  began  to 


170  NO.  26  JAYNE  STREET 

look  forward  as  the  days  slipped  by  with  the  swiftness 
of  troubled  waters. 

For  as  she  read,  and  out  of  the  necessity  of  coming  to 
a  decision  about  him  translated  what  she  read  into  terms 
of  living,  Neith  made  that  mistake  which  women  are 
prone  to  make  about  the  social  prophecies  of  men.  For 
men  see  the  Ideal  rising  on  the  horizon  like  a  cloud.  It 
climbs  and  changes  at  the  will  of  unmeasured  winds;  it 
gathers  head  and  rains  benefactions  from  a  removed, 
unreachable  heaven. 

But  for  women  the  Ideal  is  a  dew  distilled  close  to  the 
roots  of  life.  It  reflects,  in  its  roundness,  the  rainbow  of 
the  Universe.  Neith  translated  all  the  large-mindedness 
of  Adam  Frear's  political  outlook  into  terms  of  personal 
living,  when,  as  a  matter  of  fact,  he  wrote  of  men  in  na 
tions.  He  dealt  with  parties  and  policies  and  she  thought 
of  men  and  women.  She  thought  explicitly  of  marriage 
with  Adam  Frear.  But  she  thought  of  it  in  that  rare  and 
uncomplicated  medium  which  he  predicted  for  society 
at  large. 

Adam  had  been  gone  less  than  a  month  when  Neith's 
attention  was  recalled  to  Eustace  Rittenhouse  by  an 
item  in  the  evening  paper.  Not  that  Eustace  had  left  her 
unnoticed  all  these  weeks.  She  had  had  flowers  from  him, 
and  a  letter  in  which  he  had  charmingly  excused  himself 
from  seeing  more  of  her  on  the  ground  of  his  tremendous 
preoccupations  with  Aviation.  And  she  had  replied  to  it 
with  an  equally  charming  acceptance  of  his  extenuation. 
She  had,  indeed,  magnificently  resolved  that,  even  ad- 


NO.  26  JAYNE  STREET  171 

mitting  Adam  Frear  as  a  factor  in  her  final  decision, 
Eustace  should  n't  suffer  any  disadvantage  through  his 
war  service.  There  were  days,  though  these  were  fewer 
and  farther  apart,  when  her  mind  still  reverted  to  Eus 
tace  as  a  near  and  perfectly  apprehended  certainty,  as 
against  the  strange  and  intriguing  possibility  of  Adam 
Frear. 

So  when  she  saw  in  the  paper  that  the  General's  fa 
mous  collection  of  Civil  War  relics  had  been  attached  for 
debt,  her  interest  went  out  to  Eustace  in  a  pang  of  sym 
pathy.  There  was  quite  a  quarter  of  a  column  in  the 
evening  paper  about  it,  including  a  not  very  sympathetic 
revamping  of  the  General's  history,  his  long  struggle 
with  the  War  Department  over  his  title,  his  famous  ex 
travagances  and  his  gallantries,  that  had  led  to  the  sep 
aration  from  his  wife  and  the  quarrel  with  his  son,  the 
now  notable  aviator.  Poor  Eustace,  thought  Neith,  his 
notability,  if  it  was  worth  anything  at  all,  should  have 
saved  him  from  that! 

There  was  a  "follow  up"  in  the  morning  paper  in 
which  the  mover  in  the  process  for  attachment  put  him 
self  on  record  as  saying  that  he  should  n't  have  thought 
of  proceeding  within  the  General's  lifetime,  which  was 
admittedly  likely  to  be  short,  but  that  he  had  had  posi 
tive  proof  that  the  General  himself  was  making  private 
arrangements  to  dispose  of  this  last  remaining  property. 
Next  day  the  sensation  dwindled  to  an  inconsiderable 
item  to  the  effect  that  friends  of  the  General  had  come 
to  his  rescue  anonymously,  and  that  the  famous  collec- 


172  NO.  26  JAYNE  STREET 

tion  would  remain  in  his  possession  and  intact.  Neith 
suspected  the  Aunts.  She  recalled  Aunt  Emmy's  mys 
terious  intimations  of  rescue,  and  reflected  that  after 
all,  the  poor  lady  could  do  no  better  with  her  unattached 
thousands  than  to  make  herself  responsible  for  the  last 
figment  of  the  General's  importance. 

"I  wonder  if  anybody  else  thought  of  it,"  she  said  to 
Mrs.  Sherrod,  "but  I  could  n't  help  thinking,  when  I 
saw  the  notice  of  the  attachment,  that  it  was  somehow  a 
pitiful  thing  for  men  that  all  their  heroism  should  be  out 
lasted  in  time  by  the  impression  they  managed  to  make 
on  some  women's  susceptibilities.  I  suppose  the  General 
really  was  a  hero,  in  his  day,  just  as  Eustace  is  in  his. 
And  all  those  poor  young  originals  of  the  tintypes,  and 
the  writers  of  those  letters,  they  were  really  indispen 
sable.  And  it 's  to  a  poor  old  maid  on  whom  the  General 
cast  the  tail  of  his  eye,  on  her  property  really  —  for  you 
need  n't  tell  me  that  a  man  that  loves  himself  as  much 
as  General  Rittenhouse  does,  ever  loved  a  woman  —  it 's 
to  poor,  befooled  old  Emmy  that  he  owes  it  that  he  is 
able  to  keep  any  of  the  pomp  and  circumstance  of  war 
in  his  own  possession.  It  is  too  pitiful  when  you  think 
about  it!" 

"No,"  said  Madelon,  "it's  only  pitiful  when  you 
think  how  men  fail  to  know  that  love  outlasts  every 
thing.  They  go  rushing  about  seeking  an  effect  upon 
themselves.  They  seldom  realize  that  it  is  really  the 
effect  they  produce  that  gives  the  final  measure  of  their 
destiny. 


NO.  26  JAYNE  STREET  173 

"One  sees  that  on  the  stage  .  .  .  actors  trying  for  and 
being  satisfied  with  the  feel  of  popularity.  And  they 
ought  to  be  working  their  heads  off  to  make  the  people 
experience  something  on  their  own  account. 

"I  suppose/'  she  mused,  "the  Kaiser  and  the  men 
who  made  this  war  are  something  like  that.  They  have 
to  feel  powerful,  they  have  to  be  made  up  for  the  part 
with  an  army  and  banners  — "  She  laughed.  "That's  a 
far  cry  from  poor  Emmy  and  her  General." 

"Not  so  far,"  Neith  insisted,  recalling  Carter  Dun 
ham. 

"Anyway,  I  find  myself  making  deductions  like  that 
nowadays.  It's  all  I  have  to  make  deductions  from." 

"It's  all  I  have,  really,"  Neith  agreed. 

"Ah,  I  suspected  you  had  something." 

Neith  nodded.  She  could  not  bring  herself  to  talk  of 
Adam  Frear,  not  at  least  till  she  had  talked  more  with 
him.  What  she  did  say  was  that  not  all  the  personal  ex 
perience  of  war  helped  her  so  much  in  elucidations  of  war 
as  the  personal  emotion  which  had  nothing  to  do  with  it. 

"Rose  Matlock  says  —  she  was  talking  to  the  Stage 
Women's  War  Relief  yesterday  —  that  that  is  precisely 
what  we  must  contribute,  we  working- women.  She  says 
that  the  measure  of  war  has  been  taken  too  long  by 
women  in  terms  of  giving  and  grieving.  She  says  we'll 
never  get  it  out  of  the  prance  and  flourish  class  of  expe 
rience  until  we  apply  to  it  the  measure  of  other  expe 


riences." 


I  wonder,"  said  Neith,  "what  experience  she  brings 


174  NO.  26  JAYNE  STREET 

to  it  herself,  that  we  should  always  be  going  back  to  her 
measure." 

"Not  a  happy  one,  I'm  sure.  Not  that  that  old  mar 
riage  of  hers  still  troubles  her.  Something  more  recent, 
I  should  think." 

"Was  she  married?" 

"At  eighteen,  by  her  mother,  to  a  man  much  older 
than  herself.  She  left  him  after  three  weeks  and  then  all 
the  considerations  that  ought  to  have  protected  her, 
family  affection,  social  standing,  her  own  youth  and  in 
experience,  were  used  to  force  her  back.  Fortunately,  he 
died  after  a  year  or  two." 

"Somehow,  Madelon,  all  the  women  that  interest  me 
most  in  America  have  been  unhappy.  With  men,  I 
mean.  Maybe  it  was  so  abroad  —  there  was  Duse  — 
but  perhaps  I  just  did  n't  notice  it  so  much." 

"Or  it  was  n't  advertised  so  freely." 

"Of  course  there's  Millicent  and  Lutra  Ken  dries, 
they  are  happy,"  Neith  continued  to  follow  her  own 
thought,  "but  somehow  we  are  n't  drawing  any  con 
clusions  from  them  the  way  we  are  from  Frances  Ritten- 
house  and  Rose  Matlock,  and  even  poor  old  Emmy." 

"Happy  women  have  no  history,"  Mrs.  Sherrod  mis 
quoted,  "and  it's  history  we  are  making.  It  might  be," 
she  suggested,  "that  if  we  took  to  drawing  conclusions 
from  important  men,  if  we  knew  enough,  we'd  find  that 
they  were  unhappy  too." 

The  logical  conclusion  of  all  this  in  Neith's  mind  was 
that  she  went  home  and  wrote  Eustace  a  little  note. 


NO.  26  JAYNE  STREET  175 

DEAR  EUSTACE  [she  said]  — 

I  also  am  a  part  of  the  Country.  Are  n't  you  ever  coming 
to  see  me  again?  NEITH 

For  two  or  three  days  after  that  she  expected  him 
every  time  she  heard  the  doorbell  or  the  telephone  ring. 
And  then,  quite  unexpectedly,  she  heard  Aunt  Emmy, 
in  a  voice  charged  with  mysterious  caution,  urging  her 

to  come  over  to  the  Brevoort  immediately. 
i 

XII 

§38 

"Or  course,"  Aunt  Emmy  fluttered  as  they  came  down 
the  hotel  steps  into  the  street,  "with  the  young  man 
from  the  bank  there,  and  the  dear  General's  own  son, 
too,  it  would  have  been  entirely  suitable  for  me  to  go 
over  alone.  Still,  those  sort  of  people  do  have  ideas 
sometimes.  It  is  so  difficult  to  make  them  understand 
how  our  sort  of  people  feel  —  about  business  and  all 
that.  It  is  their  life,  you  know,  they  make  it  so  im 
portant. 

"Of  course  I  meant  to  go  right  around  to  the  bank 
and  explain.  But  I  did  n't  think  Mr.  Mellows  would  be 
in  such  a  hurry,  and  my  man  of  business  was  so  much 
slower  than  I  expected  — " 

"My  dear  Aunt,  what  are  you  talking  about?" 
"About  the  young  man  from  the  bank.  But  it  will  be 
perfectly  all  right,  I'm  sure."  By  the  empty  impeccabil 
ity  of  her  voice,  Neith  was  certain  that  whatever  diffi- 


176  NO.  26  JAYNE  STREET 

culty  Aunt  Emmy  had  got  herself  involved  in,  she  was 
by  no  means  so  sure  of  carrying  it  off  as  she  pretended 
to  be.  "And  if  young  Eustace  makes  any  trouble,"  she 
broke  out  again,  with  a  feeble  effect  of  archness,  "I  am 
depending  on  you  to  manage  him  for  me." 

"My  dear  Emmy,  would  you  mind  telling  me  — " 

"But  I  must  say,  Neith"  —  the  good  lady  fell  by  ac 
cident  into  the  tone  of  grievance  and  then  grasped  at  it 
as  the  drowning  man  at  a  straw  —  "you  have  n't  been 
as  sympathetic  as  I  expected.  After  all  you  and  Eustace 
have  been  through  over  in  Europe  .  .  .  still  it  was  n't 
your  own  country,  I  suppose  that  would  make  a  differ 
ence,  but  you  ought  to  have  understood  how  the  General 
would  feel  about  doing  his  bit." 

Neith  gripped  her  patience  in  both  hands.  "Just 
what  is  it  you  expected  Eustace  and  me  to  understand, 
Aunty?" 

"About  the  money  for  the  potash  man.  Of  course 
Eustace  ought  to  have  come  straight  to  me,  and  not 
gone  upsetting  the  poor  dear  General.  I  could  have  ex 
plained  perfectly."  She  lost  her  poise  a  little  as  they 
turned  in  toward  the  General's  door  where  a  waiting 
taxicab  slanted  against  the  curb.  "You  may  have  to 
help  me  out  a  little,"  she  panted.  She  looked  up  and 
down  the  street  as  though  overtaken  by  a  prescience 
of  disaster.  "You  don't  suppose  that  Frances  — "  She 
began  and  shut  herself  off  suddenly,  as  though  by  in 
hibiting  the  thought  she  could  dispel  the  unwelcome 
possibility. 


NO.  26  JAYNE  STREET  177 

Aunt  Emmy  had  dabbled  in  New  Thought  recently 
as  an  antidote  to  the  persistently  unhappy  things  that 
kept  thrusting  themselves  on  her  world.  All  the  way  up 
the  stairs  Neith  could  see  her  visibly  trying  on  one  or 
another  of  the  preferred  attitudes  and  settling  on  a 
jaunty  ease,  as  they  came  in  sight  of  the  General's  open 
door. 

It  was  open  to  mitigate  the  closeness  of  the  summer 
warmth  beating  up  from  the  sun-baked  avenue,  and  the 
musty  smell  of  old  knapsacks  and  yellowing  documents 
that  issued  from  it  was  like  the  very  odor  of  senility. 
To  Neith's  vibrant  energy,  there  was  something  almost 
indecent  in  it. 

All  at  once  these  rags  of  history  that  had  hung  so  long 
about  the  decrepit  figure  of  glory,  took  a  new  note  from 
the  squared  shoulders  of  young  Eustace  in  his  Belgian 
uniform,  with  the  row  of  medals  across  his  breast.  He 
was  standing  with  his  hands  resting  on  the  back  of  a 
chair  as  they  might  once  have  rested  on  a  sword,  wear 
ing  the  habitual  soldierly  mask  of  deference  to  a  supe 
rior  officer.  An  attitude  which,  even  as  she  hurried  across 
to  him,  struck  Neith  as  the  one  thing  in  the  situation, 
the  saving  note,  to  be  thankful  for. 

"Eustace,"  she  said,  "I  don't  know  what  has  hap 
pened,  but  I  can't  have  Aunt  Emmy  bothered  about 
anything." 

"There  are  some  things  I  must  ask  Miss  Schuyler  to 
explain."  Though  he  was  surprised  to  see  her,  even  with 
Neith  the  officerly  bearing  was  not  relaxed.  Beyond  him 


178  NO.  26  JAYNE  STREET 

an  unknown  and  exceedingly  correct  young  man,  who 
could  not  possibly  have  been  mistaken  for  anything  but 
what  Aunt  Emmy  described  him,  the  young  person 
from  the  bank,  rose  tardily. 

"I  assure  you,"  he  addressed  the  room  at  large,  "the 
Bank  has  always  realized  that  the  matter  could  be  sat 
isfactorily  explained." 

"You  should  have  come  directly  to  me."  Aunt  Emmy 
was  appeasable,  but  firm.  "My  man  of  business"  — 
with  a  large  air  —  "disappointed  me  or  I  should  have 
been  around  to  the  bank  myself  to  explain.  Though,  of 
course,  I  had  no  idea  you  would  be  in  such  a  hurry  about 
a  few  hundred  dollars.  I  had  always"  —  with  a  flatter 
ing  reproach  —  "always  understood  that  yours  was  a 
perfectly  reliable  bank.  Perfectly.  Besides"  —  here  she 
included  Eustace  in  her  explanation  which  she  evi 
dently  regarded  as  proceeding  very  satisfactorily  —  "I 
understood  that  the  stock  was  to  be  delivered  first.  The 
potash  man  gave  me  to  understand  that  it  would  be 
delivered  immediately."  She  triumphed,  preparing  to 
receive  their  acknowledgments  graciously. 

"You  mean,"  said  young  Eustace,  abating  nothing 
of  his  fine  impersonal  officer's  manner,  "that  when  you 
forged  my  mother's  name  to  a  note  of  my  father's,  you 
expected  to  receive  something  for  it?" 

"Oh!"  cried  Neith  at  the  injurious  word.  She  crossed 
over  and  put  her  arm  as  far  as  it  would  go  around  Aunt 
Emmy.  Beyond  her  in  the  inner  room  she  could  see  the 
General  at  his  table,  combing  his  whiskers  with  a  fretful 


NO.  26  JAYNE  STREET  179 

hand  as  he  disdained  both  his  son's  interference  in  his 
affairs  and  Aunt  Emmy's  imbecile  explanations. 

"Not  for  myself,  Eustace,  nothing  at  all  for  myself." 
There  was  a  hurried  note  in  the  poor  lady's  protest,  as 
though  she  found  herself  half  overtaken  by  fear.  "But 
your  father  —  the  man  assured  me  operations  were  to 
begin  at  once,  and  the  General  was  to  have  controlling 
interest  in  the  stock.  So  appropriate.  I  should  think  you 
could  understand  that."  She  recovered  her  jauntiness 
with  the  subtly  implied  question  as  to  Eustace's  mili 
tary  standing. 

"I  suppose  it  did  n't  occur  to  you  that  if  this  note, 
endorsed  with  my  mother's  name,  got  past  the  bank, 
the  amount  would  come  out  of  the  little  left  to  my 
mother  by  my  father's  extravagance." 

"I  was  going  around  to  tell  the  bank  just  to  take  it 
out  of  my  account,  only,  I  have  already  explained,  my 
man  of  business  disappointed  me."  It  began  to  dawn  on 
Aunt  Emmy  that  she  was  rather  in  a  mess  and  that  the 
dear  General  was  leaving  her  pretty  much  to  her  own 
methods  of  extrication.  "Anyway,"  she  flared  suddenly 
in  justification,  "I  should  think  you  would  prefer  having 
your  mother's  name  on  your  father's  note.  I  should  n't 
think  you  would  want  the  bank  people  to  know  that  she 
had  driven  him  — " 

"Damn!"  said  the  General. 

"You  leave  my  mother  out  of  it,"  ordered  young 
Eustace. 

"Neith!  You  understand,  don't  you?"  Aunt  Emmy 


180  NO.  26  JAYNE  STREET 

fluttered  heavily  to  the  chair  her  niece  provided  for 
her. 

"Yes,  Emmy.  You  wanted  the  General  to  buy  the 
potash  stock  because  you  thought  it  was  patriotic,  and 
you  used  Mrs.  Rittenhouse's  name  because  it  seemed 
more  suitable.  It  was  sweet  and  kind  of  you,  and  I  am 
sure  the  gentleman  from  the  bank  understands."  She 
left  Eustace  out  of  it.  How  could  he  mortify  those  two 
poor  old  things  in  this  fashion? 

"I  assure  you,"  the  young  man  from  the  bank  rose  to 
the  suggestion,  trying  not  to  look  as  if  he  wished  he 
had  n't  come,  "that  the  Bank  has  been  of  the  opinion 
from  the  beginning  that  it  was  merely  a  misunderstand 
ing."  He  bowed  to  the  elder  Miss  Schuyler,  having  in 
view  the  amount  of  her  current  account.  "And  Mrs. 
Rittenhouse  has  already  assured  us  that  she  has  no  in 
tention  to  prosecute  —  " 

"Oh,  Neith,  they  could  n't  do  that,  could  they!" 

Eustace  brushed  the  poor  lady's  trepidation  impa 
tiently  aside.  "You  have  not  yet  explained  what  part 
my  father  had  in  this." 

"I  have  already  explained,  young  man,"  chopped  the 
General  impatiently,  "that  I  did  not  examine  the  note 
after  Miss  Schuyler  endorsed  it."  Aunt  Emmy  chirked 
up  immediately  at  this  intimation  of  support. 

"Naturally,  I  could  n't  let  him!"  Tears  threatened. 

"I  was  perfectly  willing  for  Eustace  to  have  my 
money,  but  how  would  it  have  looked,  my  name  on  a 
married  man's  note!  And  Eustace  has  n't  been  ...  He 


NO.  26  JAYNE  STREET  181 

was  n't  always  careful  .  .  .  other  women's  names  ..." 
Neith  wanted  to  laugh  at  poor  old  Aunt  Emmy  growing 
skittish  over  the  ghosts  of  the  General's  ancient  scan 
dals.  She  felt  herself  choked  instead. 

"If  the  gentleman  from  the  bank  is  satisfied?"  she 
suggested. 

He  met  her  promptly  with  a  tentative  gesture  of  de 
parture.  The  last  thing  he  wished  was  to  associate  him 
self  in  the  mind  of  Miss  Emmaline  Schuyler  with  an  un 
pleasantness  which  might  lead  to  the  withdrawal  of  her 
account. 

Neith  held  his  attention.  "You  understand  that  my 
aunt  is  perfectly  able  to  meet  any  note  she  may  en 
dorse;  it  is  simply  that  she  is  unaccustomed  to  business 
methods." 

The  young  man  murmured  his  convictions  as  he  got 
himself  out. 

"I  think  you  had  better  give  me  that,  Eustace." 
Neith  held  out  her  hand  for  the  note  which  Lieutenant 
Rittenhouse  folded  and  unfolded  between  his  fingers. 

"No!  "said  Eustace. 

There  was  a  slight  trembling  among  the  medals  on  his 
breast.  The  General  had  got  up  and  begun  pacing  to 
and  fro  in  an  accession  of  senile  impotence.  They  were 
extraordinarily  alike,  those  two,  -except  for  the  deep 
cleft  of  indulgence  in  the  General's  chin  and  a  little  un 
certainty  in  the  contours  once  hidden  by  the  magnifi 
cent  whisker.  Eustace  took  a  paper  from  his  pocket  and 
spread  it  open  on  the  chipped  mahogany  console. 


182  NO.  26  JAYNE  STREET 

"Father"—  He  had  difficulties  with  the  word  — 
"there  is  something  here  I  must  ask  you  to  sign.  Miss 
Schuyler  will  witness  it." 

"Sign!  You  —  whippersnapper!"  The  General  must 
have  had  some  intuition  of  the  meaning  of  that  paper 
which  was  closed  to  the  two  women.  "You  think  be 
cause  a  fool  woman  does  n't  know  how  to  endorse  a 
note  — "  He  struggled  with  his  wrath  for  the  habitual 
manner  of  the  sufficing  male.  "You  think  because  a  mis 
take  has  been  made,  a  mistake  natural  to  a  lady  who 
has  been  brought  up  as  a  lady,  and  my  friend  —  I  let 
you  come  here  and  humiliate  me  with  your  damned 
witnesses,"  he  broke  out  afresh,  "because  it  was  a  mis 
take.  But  you  go  too  far  when  you  try  this  sort  of  thing, 
young  man!"  He  tapped  the  offending  document  with 
his  cane.  It  was  as  if  he  would  have  struck  the  author  of 
it  if  he  had  dared. 

Eustace  winced  and  darkened.  It  occurred  to  Neith 
that  there  was  less  in  the  relationship  to  govern  those 
two  at  this  moment  than  in  the  shared  military  tradi 
tion.  The  river  wind,  seeking  up  the  hot  avenue,  rustled 
the  blinds  and  drew  a  faint  clanking  from  the  ancient 
accouterments;  it  fanned  hot  jealousy  of  age  against 
youth. 

"Don't  you  come  trying  things  like  that  on  me,  you 
—  I'll  have  none  of  your  damned  interference!  I've 
stood  all  I'm  going  to  from  you  and  your  mother!  You 
in  your  foreign  uniform!  To  try  and  tell  me  what  I  shall 
do  and  not  do  to  serve  my  Country!" 


NO.  26  JAYNE  STREET  183 

"If  you  refer  to  this  alleged  potash  concern  — " 

"I'll  not  have  it,  young  man,  do  you  hear,  I'll  have 
none  of  it!  You  and  your  witnesses."  The  General  began 
to  move  up  and  down  the  room,  priming  himself  for  a 
final  strut.  "You  heard  what  this  young  lady  said,  that 
her  aunt  is  able  to  meet  any  note  she  may  choose  to 
endorse.  There's  a  witness  for  you!  You'll  find,  you 
King-server,  that  your  father  is  not  entirely  without 
friends—" 

Aunt  Emmy  bridled  as  she  felt  her  status  publicly 
defined. 

"You  have  one  friend  whom  it  is  my  duty  to  pro 
tect,"  said  Eustace,  "my  mother  — " 

"Your  mother,  sir!" 

"My  mother  has  recently  sold  her  remaining  jewels  to 
rescue  your  historical  collection  from  the  process  of  law 
to  which  your  folly  exposed  it.  I  do  not  propose  that  she 
shall  suffer  any  further  risk  or  embarrassment  in  your 
interests.  I  have  brought  with  me  my  mother's  receipt 
for  the  bill  she  met,  and  a  bill  of  sale  for  the  collection, 
made  out  to  me,  which  I  expect  you  to  sign." 

"Eustace,  Eustace!  May  I  come  up?" 

The  voice  below  them  on  the  stair  pleaded  doubt 
fully.  Frances  Rittenhouse  had  seen  the  young  man 
from  the  bank  go  past.  It  had  been  her  cab,  after  all,  as 
Emmy  surmised. 

"Not  yet,  Mother!" 

Neith  strained  for  a  glimpse  of  the  face  over  the  ban 
ister  because  she  found  it  more  supportable  than  facing 


184  NO.  26  JAYNE  STREET 

the  drop  of  mortification  as  the  bubble  of  Emmy's  ro 
mance  about  mysterious  friends  rallying  to  the  General's 
rescue  exploded. 

She  was  the  sorrier  for  Emmy  as  she  realized  that  the 
loss  of  the  opportunity  for  a  final  triumph  over  Frances 
had  probably  been  owed  to  Aunt  Rebecka.  While  Mrs. 
Doremas  had  haggled  over  the  dollars  that  bulwarked 
her  own  sense  of  social  importance,  Frances  Ritten- 
house  had  outbid  them  in  the  General's  defense. 

"I'm  sorry,  Father,"  said  Eustace,  softened  as  he  al 
ways  was  by  his  mother's  presence,  "that  this  step  has 
become  necessary,  but"  —  he  turned  back  to  the  Gen 
eral  —  "I  am  leaving  off  this  uniform  that  offends  you  so 
much,  in  a  few  days,  and  I  cannot  leave  my  mother  ex 
posed  to  the  risks  of  your  —  speculations.  I  have  here  a 
contract  in  which  she  allows  you  the  use  of  this  apart 
ment  for  the  rest  of  your  life,  and  fifty  dollars  a  month, 
to  which  I  have  added  something  from  my  pay,  and  a 
suitable  provision  in  case  anything  happens.  In  return 
you  are  to  make  over  your  entire  interest  in  the  collec 
tion,  which  remains  in  your  care,  and  agree  not  to  make 
any  further  demands  — " 

"Eustace,  Eustace!"  Frances  Rittenhouse  was  com 
ing  up. 

"I'll  not  sign!"  The  General's  voice  was  hurried  as  if 
it  raced  with  that  soft  step  on  the  stair.  "  I  tell  you  I  am 
able  to  take  care  of  my  own  affairs.  All  I  need  is  a  little 
time.  Time  for  development.  I  tell  you  — " 

"If  you  are  thinking  of  your  Mr."  —  Eustace  con- 


NO.  26  JAYNE  STREET  185 

suited  the  note  in  his  hand  —  "Mellows,  you'll  not  hear 
of  him  again.  I  have  reported  him  and  his  potash  com 
pany  to  the  proper  authorities  for  an  attempt  to  sell 
fraudulent  stock." 

"It's  a  lie!  It's  another  of  your  infernal  tricks  to  in 
terfere  with  my  business!  You  impudent  young  scoun 
drel!" 

"Eustace!"  Frances  Rittenhouse  leaned  against  the 
banister  outside  her  husband's  rooms.  "Eustace!"  she 
said  again,  and  Neith  remembered  that  that  also  was 
her  husband's  name.  "Don't  speak  so  to  him.  He  is  go 
ing  —  so  soon,  Our  son!  We  may  not  see  him  again." 

"No  son  of  mine  would  be  wearing  a  foreign  uniform 
with  his  country  at  war!" 

"Only  for  a  few  days,  Eustace.  That  he  might  learn 
to  serve  his  country  better  .  .  .  our  only  son  ..." 

"Hush,  Mother!  I  think  you  had  better  sign,  sir." 

§39 

In  the  few  minutes  more  that  the  scene  lasted,  Neith 
had  one  of  those  swift,  wordless  illuminations,  in  which 
whole  tracts  of  unexplored  experiences  are  intimately 
possessed. 

With  the  appearance  of  Mrs.  Rittenhouse  the  focus 
of  her  interest  had  changed  from  the  struggle  going  on 
between  father  and  son  to  the  more  tragic  because  less 
expressive  and  dramatic  struggle  between  the  two 
women.  It  came  to  her  all  the  more  poignantly  because 
it  was  the  first  time  of  her  realizing  that  there  was, 


186  NO.  26  JAYNE  STREET 

or  could  be,  any  divergence  in  the  interests  of  women 
which  was  more  than  incidental,  or  of  any  wider  import 
than  the  accidents  of  birth  and  breeding. 

She  had  begun  by  being  touched  with  the  pity  of  per 
ceiving,  as  Frances  Rittenhouse  hung  on  the  landing 
outside  her  husband's  door,  that  for  her  at  least  the  real 
pain  of  the  situation  lay  still  in  the  amputated  relation. 
Something  of  her,  by  the  mysterious  alchemy  of  mar 
riage,  was  still  bound  up  with  that  aged  and  broken  life, 
something  called  imperatively  for  the  touch  of  that 
trembling  hand,  the  need  of  his  breast  against  hers. 
Dear  as  her  son  was,  and  it  was  impossible  not  to  see  in 
every  inflection  of  her  voice,  in  every  turn  of  the  once 
beautiful  head  toward  him,  how  dear  he  was,  the  pain 
of  his  going  had  no  such  pang  for  her  as  the  fact  of  his 
father's  deliberate  exclusion  of  himself  from  that  pain. 
She  wanted  her  husband  now  in  the  hour  when,  as  she 
saw  it,  she  gave  her  son  to  possibilities  of  death,  as,  in 
the  first  weakness  of  accomplished  motherhood,  she 
gave  him  to  life.  Never  wholly  hers  so  long  as  the  un- 
severed  fiber  of  affection  bound  her  to  the  boy's  father, 
nothing  could  so  have  beaten  down  the  dignity  of  her 
giving  like  the  father's  refusal  to  share  it. 

The  moment  before,  Neith  had  been  taken  by  the  pity 
of  the  General's  having  lost,  in  his  self-centered  wrath, 
that  which  should  have  become  his  military  career  like 
nothing  which  his  vanity  could  have  contrived,  the  sur 
vival  of  his  best  in  his  son.  The  generous  impulse  to  re 
sist  oppression  which  had  sent  young  Eustace  to  the  re- 


NO.  26  JAYNE  STREET  187 

lief  of  Belgium,  had  been  bred  in  his  spirit  and  his  flesh 
by  the  same  spirit  that  had  dropped  the  first  Eustace 
out  of  his  dormitory  window  to  enlist  in  the  Army  of  the 
Potomac.  Intimations  of  the  strange  cross  and  clash 
of  what  was  the  best  in  successive  generations  of  men, 
glinted  here  and  there  through  the  situation.  They 
sharpened  its  shadows  like  the  gleams  of  metal  in  the 
thin  rays  that  found  their  way  between  the  blinds  to 
the  pommels  of  old  swords,  to  the  points  of  the  war 
medals  aswing  on  young  Eustace's  breast.  But  now,  as 
she  saw  Frances  Rittenhouse  flutter  outside  the  rooms 
which  only  her  affections  preserved  to  her  son's  father, 
all  Neith's  finer  and  more  discriminating  faculties  were 
engaged  in  the  profound  and  importunate  significance 
of  the  relation  between  her  and  the  woman  inside,  her 
fat  old  face  stiffening  with  the  sense  of  the  strategic 
improvement  of  her  position  by  the  General's  cold  ex 
clusion  of  his  wife. 

How  was  it  possible,  as  it  amazingly  seemed  to  be, 
that  Aunt  Emmy's  should  be  the  superior  right  to  be 
there?  How  had  it  come  about  that  women's  rating, 
even  with  themselves,  should  take  such  color  from  the 
personal  favor  of  a  man?  What  fundamental  weakness 
was  it  in  women,  or  in  their  rendering  of  their  relation 
to  such  situations,  that  gave  to  Eustace  Rittenhouse 
the  right  to  affront  the  gentle  lady  who  bore  his  name, 
by  refusing  to  participate  in  their  common  parent 
hood.  Ah,  had  not  women  sanctioned  that  refusal  too 
many  times  on  behalf  of  other  women?  Had  they  not 


188  NO.  26  JAYNE  STREET 

in  every  tradition  of  their  lives  consented  to  live  by 
favor?  All  the  women  that  Eustace  Rittenhouse  had 
known,  the  women  who  had  cajoled  him,  who  had 
been  the  recipients  of  favors  that  he  had  stripped  his 
wives  to  provide,  the  women  who,  in  the  current  phrase, 
had  "fallen  for  him"  — oh,  they  had  fallen!  The 
woman  who  was  the  mother  of  his  son,  and  by  her  lin 
gering  there  outside  his  threshold  confessed  the  need  of 
that  favor  for  her  right  of  entry  —  had  they  not  strug 
gled  with  one  another?  Made  of  the  inestimable  posses 
sion  a  weapon  for  their  own  defeat? 

What  was  militarism  .  .  .  what  was  Capitalism,  but 
the  extension  among  men  of  the  perpetual  battle  of  the 
hearth?  Propaganda  .  .  .  German  propaganda  .  .  .  poli 
tics,  even  at  its  best  as  the  public  concern  for  man's 
private  convictions  —  what  was  it  but  the  overflow  — 
the  organized  overflow  into  the  world  of  affairs,  of 
that  subtle  play  among  the  passions  and  weakness  of 
men  which  has  been  the  age-long  serious  occupation  of 
the  mothers  and  wives  of  men?  America  .  .  .  the  world 
.  .  .  and  Frances  Rittenhouse! 

The  General  signed. 

As  was  to  be  expected,  having  pushed  his  resistance  to 
the  utmost,  he  took  a  sudden  tack  back  upon  the  track 
of  his  ancient  vanity,  and  made  his  signing  a  renounce 
ment  of  all  his  wife's  claims  upon  himself.  Put  it,  as  he 
seemed  to  do,  in  the  light  of  her  need  of  his  personal  in 
terest,  as  a  triumph  over  his  wife,  it  left  him  free  to  avail 
himself,  without  reproach,  of  whatever  he  could  wheedle 


NO.  26  JAYNE  STREET  189 

out  of  Aunt  Emmy  and  Aunt  Doremas.  Although  Neith 
had  been  too  deep  in  private  speculation  to  note  the 
steps  by  which  this  had  been  brought  about,  she  realized, 
as  she  found  herself  affixing  her  signature  as  witness, 
that  he  would  interpret  it  as  a  new  lease  for  the  same 
sort  of  indulgence  that  had  brought  him  to  just  this 
pass.  But  she  no  longer  cared  what  became  of  the 
General.  She  was  dazed  in  her  inmost  comprehension, 
like  a  string  suddenly  and  strongly  plucked,  disappear 
ing  in  its  own  vibrations. 

The  one  clear  point  of  consciousness  was  to  get  Aunt 
Emmy  away  before  she  became  a  further  indecent  wit 
ness  to  the  hurt  of  Frances  Rittenhouse's  poor  heart.  Rid 
of  the  other  woman,  before  whom  necessity  obliged  him 
to  play  the  conquering  part,  there  might  be  some  natu 
ralness  of  farewell  between  father  and  son.  Neith  signed 
standing. 

"We  must  go,  Emmy." 

She  was  ashamed  before  the  maiden  smirk  of  Emmy's 
eyes,  poor  Emmy  in  whom  the  glory  of  womanhood  had 
run  to  this  mean  triumph  of  the  sex  proprieties.  But 
Neith  hurried  her  too  much.  Emmy  had  seen  herself 
romantically  standing  by  the  General  to  the  last.  She 
fumbled  her  leave-taking.  Eustace  gained  his  mother's 
side.  Going,  he  saluted.  It  was  the  best  thing  he  could 
have  done. 

"If  you  wish  to  communicate  with  me  at  any  time, 
you  can  reach  me  through  the  Aviation  Headquarters, 


sir." 


190  NO.  26  JAYNE  STREET 

"I  have  no  communication  to  make  to  the  wearer  of 
a  King's  uniform." 

"Very  good,  sir!  Come,  Mother." 

He  was  out  on  the  landing  and  had  his  arm  around 
her. 

XIII 

§40 

ONCE  in  the  Avenue,  Neith  made  short  work  of  Aunt 
Emmy. 

"You  would  better  go  right  up  and  spend  the  day 
with  Millicent  and  the  children,"  she  said.  "You  can 
telephone  Aunt  Rebecka  after  you  get  there  that  you  are 
staying  to  lunch.  You  know  if  you  go  home  now  Becky 
will  see  that  you  have  been  agitated,  and  she  will  have  it 
all  out  of  you  in  no  time." 

"But  —  I  thought  we  could  just  go  in  somewhere  to 
gether  — "  Emmy  had  counted  on  an  hour  or  two  with 
Neith  in  which  to  build  up  some  sort  of  a  version  of  the 
morning's  occurrences  in  her  own  mind  which  would  be 
proof  against  Becky's  criticism. 

"I  have  an  engagement,"  Neith  promptly  fibbed. 
"At  least,"  she  extenuated  to  herself,  "I'm  going  to 
have."  She  had  caught  the  tiny  spark  of  an  appeal  from 
Eustace  as  he  put  his  mother  into  her  waiting  taxi. 
"You  know  how  pleased  the  children  are  to  see  you," 
she  was  glad  to  be  able  to  add.  Millicent's  children 
played  with  their  Great-Great-Aunt  Emmaline  as 


NO.  26  JAYNE  STREET  191 

though  she  were  a  tame  and  not  too  intelligent  ele 
phant. 

Neith  was  not  surprised  to  find  Eustace  at  her  elbow 
as  she  turned  back  from  putting  Aunt  Emmy  into  a 
cab. 

"There  was  n't  time  for  me  to  go  home  to  lunch  with 
my  mother,"  he  explained;  "I  thought  you  might  be 
willing  to  lunch  with  me  here."  She  saw  that  he  was  pale 
and  still  shaken. 

"How  much  time  have  you?" 

"I  have  to  meet  Beardsley  at  two-thirty."  Beardsley 
was  his  chief. 

"  Come  home  with  me,  then.  I  can  scramble  up  some 
thing  and  we  can  talk.  My  maid  has  gone  to  make  muni 
tions,"  she  added  lightly,  "and  I  am  doing  as  I  can  for 
myself." 

Eustace  accepted  with  relief.  They  kept  the  talk  as 
impersonal  as  possible  so  long  as  they  were  in  the  street. 
He  was  to  put  on  his  country's  uniform  to-morrow,  he 
told  her.  After  that  it  would  be  a  matter  of  weeks,  per 
haps  days.  He  added  modestly  that  he  would  begin  the 
new  services  as  a  major. 

And  his  own  father  not  to  say  good-bye  to  him !  Neith 
regarded  the  distinguished  aviator  with  a  sudden  rush 
of  sympathy. 

"And  are  you  satisfied  with  what  you  leave  behind, 
conditions  in  the  Air  Service,  I  mean?" 

"Oh  —  theoretically,  ideal.  A  combination  of  avia 
tion  experts  and  big  business  men.  Only,  who  do  you 


192  NO.  26  JAYNE  STREET 

suppose  is  at  the  head  of  the  Construction  Committee? 
—  Bruce  Havens." 


"The  Senator  had  him  appointed.  Oh,  well,  Bruce  has 
a  habit  of  getting  things  done.  And  the  Senator  has  a 
large  spruce  interest  in  the  Northwest." 

"Also  Bruce  has  a  habit  of  not  being  willing  to  let 
people  tell  him  things.  But  Bruce  is  above  profiteering." 
Neith  did  him  full  justice. 

"What  he  must  get  above  is  the  habit  of  doing 
business  as  if  the  profit  were  the  only  thing  to  be  made 
out  of  it.  And  looking  at  the  scientific  expert  as  an  im 
practical  dreamer.  But  it's  like  that  in  all  the  depart 
ments." 

"So  I  should  imagine.  You  know  Lutra  Dunham's 
idea  of  centralized  cooking  for  wage-  working  women,  the 
five  or  six  million  of  them  that  have  families  to  look  after 
—  well,  she  and  Rose  Matlock  went  down  to  see  the 
Food  Administration  about  it  last  month." 

"Hoover  should  have  put  her  on  his  staff." 

"Ah,  they  did  n't  see  Hoover.  They  saw  a  stock 
broker." 

"Not  really!  And  Lute  has  pretty  near  given  her  life 
to  things  of  that  kind!  What  did  they  do?" 

"  Came  home  again.  She's  not  in  the  food  work  at  all 
now,  she's  on  the  Women  in  Industry.  She  says  wages, 
at  least,  is  something  Big  Business  can  understand." 

"One  thing  we'll  know  in  America  by  the  time  this 
war  is  over,"  opined  Eustace  as  they  crossed  under  the 


NO.  26  JAYNE  STREET  193 

EL;  "we'll  know  how  much,  or  how  little,  Business  is 
good  for,  Business  brains,  Business  efficiency.  Our  little 
American  Joss." 

"They  are  always  telling  me,  Eustace  —  the  Ken- 
dries,  you  know,  and  others  —  that  this  is  a  Capitalists' 
war.  Is  it?" 

"If  it  is  they've  made  mighty  poor  preparation  for 
it."  Eustace  enlarged  on  this  point  all  the  way  from 
Waverley  Place  to  Jayne  Street.  "They  talk  about 
Capitalism  being  organized  and  plotting  against  the 
masses,"  he  said.  "Darned  short-sighted  plotting,  then. 
You  know,"  he  ingeniously  propounded,  "I'm  begin 
ning  to  think  that  the  real  evil  of  the  Capitalist  system 
is  that  it  is  n't  a  system  at  all,  that  it  does  n't  plan 
nor  foresee,  nor  organize  its  efforts  in  any  degree." 

They  came  to  the  house  in  Jayne  Street  and  fell  with 
relief  into  the  personal  note.  Eustace  followed  Neith 
about  in  a  restless  intimacy  from  kitchen  to  table  as  she 
put  together  a  meal. 

"I'm  sorry  you  had  to  go  through  what  you  did  this 
morning,  Neith." 

"You  were  n't  responsible  for  that.  I  had  to  stand  by 
Aunt  Emmy,  of  course,  and  in  a  way  I'm  glad  I  was 
there.  I  mean,  I  found  it  profitable.  It  made  me  feel  more 
hopeful  that  we  should  n't  make  quite  such  a  mess  of 
our  personal  lives." 

"We?"  said  Eustace,  with  sudden  hope. 

"Our  generation.  There  is  n't  so  much  of  what  Carter 
Dunham  calls  'bunk,'  in  our  way  of  looking  at  things. 


194  NO.  26  JAYNE  STREET 

Poor  Emmy's  notions  of  propriety,"  she  went  on,  emerg 
ing  from  a  temporary  eclipse  in  the  pantry,  "and  your 
father's  notions  of  —  Glory,  of  his  always  having  to  be 
on  parade  as  Man,  as  masculine.  It  really  was  thought 
creditable  to  a  man  to  do  what  he  did  when  he  was 
young;  spending  his  wives'  money  to  drink  champagne 
out  of  an  opera-singer's  slipper.  Not  that  he  did  that 
exactly,  but  you  know  what  I  mean.  Do  you  mind  my 
talking  this  way  about  it?" 

"No.  I  want  to  hear." 

"He  was  really  rather  magnificent  according  to  his 
time.  That  raid  of  his  with  his  men  — " 

"He'd  be  court-martialed  for  it  now." 

"Well,  we  mustn't  judge  him  too  much  by  now.  It's 
a  changed  way  of  looking  at  things,  and  I  do  believe  it 
is  really  a  better  way.  I  thought  that  this  morning.  I 
suppose,"  she  meditated,  "your  father  did  n't  treat 
the  first  Mrs.  Rittenhouse  very  differently  from  your 
mother." 

"Rather  worse.  She  died  under  it." 

"And  your  mother  escaped." 

"She  has  n't  escaped  suffering."  Eustace  clouded. 

"One  sees  that."  Neith  was  silent  a  moment  in  tribute 
to  what  she  had  read  in  the  face  of  the  second  Mrs.  Rit 
tenhouse.  "But  she  saw  her  way  out  of  it  with  dignity. 
Or  you  saw  it  for  her.  We  —  the  onlookers  —  may  see  a 
way  to  escape  without  getting  out."  She  tried  to  lighten 
the  matter  with  a  humorous  smile.  "Even  if  I  should 
miss  all  my  chances,  as  Aunt  Emmy  has,  you  can't  see 


NO.  26  JAYNE  STREET  195 

me  doing  the  same  sort  of  thing  that  Aunt  Emmy  does, 
ever!" 

"No."  He  opened  his  mouth  as  if  to  say  more,  im 
pulsively,  and  shut  it  again.  "Oh,  no,"  he  said. 

"Well,  then,  we  are  advancing.  It's  a  comfort  to  think 
that,  in  the  face  of  all  that's  going  on.  Rose  Matlock 
says  — "  She  checked,  laughing. 

"Well?"  Eustace  demanded. 

"Nothing,  only  I  was  amused  to  catch  myself  quoting 
Rose  Matlock  like  the  others.  I've  really  only  heard  her 
once." 

"I  understand  she's  a  remarkable  woman." 

"I  begin  to  see  why.  She  has  a  way  of  coming  out 
ahead  of  us  in  the  very  place  where  we  are  bound,  only 
we  don't  see  it  until  we  get  there.  This  morning  I  sud 
denly  saw  a  great  many  things  that  I  had  never  thought 
of  before.  I  can't  explain  exactly.  It  was  very  clear  at  the 
time,  but  it  is  gone  now.  Only,  I  think  we  women  are 
much  more  to  blame  for  things  as  they  are,  than  we  are 
willing  to  admit.  I  have  n't  said  anything  to  you  about 
this,  Eustace"  —  she  lightly  touched  his  medals  with 
the  tips  of  her  fingers  as  she  passed  —  "but  I  want  you 
to  know  that  I  am  beginning  to  see  it  as  something  very 
fine.  Men  are  brave."  She  changed  the  note  suddenly  in 
the  interests  of  hospitality.  "If  you  think  you  are  brave 
enough  to  carve  a  cold  chicken  — " 

By  common  consent  they  were  as  gay  as  possible  dur 
ing  the  meal.  Later  in  the  blue  and  mahogany  room, 
which  had  been  recurtained  for  the  season  in  billowy 


196  NO.  26  JAYNE  STREET 

white  and  made  cool  with  ferns  in  blue-and- white  porce 
lain  pots,  they  came  back  to  the  more  personal  frame. 
The  windows  were  open  and  the  slightly  fetid  summer 
odors  of  Jayne  Street  came  faintly  up  to  them. 

"Shall  you  stay  in  town  all  summer?" 

"I  hadn't  thought  much  about  it;  there  seems  so 
much  to  do." 

"My  mother  is  going  down  to  the  cottage  at  Stamford 
as  soon  as  I  am  off.  She  can  do  her  Bed  Cross  work  as 
well  from  there.  She  told  me  to  say  that  she  would  be 
more  than  happy  if  you  would  come  down  to  her,  if  only 
for  a  week  or  two." 

"For  week-ends,  I  might  manage  it." 

"You  see,"  said  Eustace  quite  suddenly,  "my  mother 
knows  how  it  is  with  me.  That  I  love  you.  I  had  n't 
meant  to  tell  you.  All  these  weeks  there  has  been  so 
much  depending  on  me,  there  is  so  much  still.  I  did  n't 
dare  let  myself  go.  As  long  as  there  was  nothing  to  it 
but  my  wanting  you,  I  could  put  that  aside.  But  if  such 
a  thing  had  happened  as  that  you  would  have  me,  I 
could  n't  have  put  you  aside.  But  somehow  —  what  you 
said  about  to-day  has  made  a  difference." 

He  studied  his  cigar  carefully,  not  finding  the  courage 
to  look  at  her  until  he  had  had  his  say. 

"What  you  said  about  my  father  .  .  .  Always,  since 
I  have  been  old  enough  to  understand  what  my  mother 
went  through,  I  have  been  afraid  it  might  happen  to  me 
to  make  some  woman  suffer  like  that.  I  'm  very  like  my 
father  in  some  ways  .  .  .  But  I'm  like  my  mother,  too, 


NO.  26  JAYNE  STREET  197 

and  she  has  made  me  see  that  marriage  is  n't  just  two 
people.  There's  the  man  and  the  woman,  and  there's 
the  marriage.  It's  still  there  for  my  mother.  Even 
though  my  father  is  n't  there,  it's  there  for  her.  A  living 
thing.  .  .  . 

"It  would  be  there  for  me,"  said  Eustace.  "It  would 
be  in  my  plane  with  me.  There's  a  rule  against  taking 
passengers  in  war  planes  "  —  he  gave  it  a  wry  twist  of 
humor.  "A  man  only  really  does  his  best  when  he's  on 
his  own.  And  when  his  best  is  not  for  himself,  but  for  the 
whole  works  — "  He  broke  off. 

"You  must  do  your  best,  of  course."  Neith  groped  for 
the  thread  that  would  pull  them  back  from  the  brink  of 
decision.  But  like  most  reticent  men,  when  they  do  talk, 
Eustace  had  uncorked  the  fountain  and  must  let  it  play. 

"However  it  turned  out,"  he  said,  "I  would  want  a 
marriage  like  my  mother's,  one  that  would  stand  up  by 
itself.  That  would  mean  something  by  itself  and  go  on 
meaning  something  even  though  I  did  n't  always  mean 
as  much  by  myself.  And  I  would  n't  want  a  woman  to 
marry  me  who  did  n't  feel  that  way  about  it,  too." 

"That's  the  way  I  should  want  to  feel." 

"And  do  you  think  that  you  could  sometime  make 
that  kind  of  a  marriage  with  me?" 

"I  don't  know,  Eustace." 

"I  should  want  you  to  know,  at  any  rate,"  he  said, 
"that  there's  never  been  any  other  woman,  that  there's 
never  likely  to  be  any  one  else  with  whom  I  could  make 
such  a  marriage  myself." 


198  NO.  26  JAYNE  STREET 

"Ah,  don't  say  that — "  The  exclamation  was  in 
voluntary.  It  struck  immense  and  vibrant  silences. 

"Does  that  mean,"  said  Eustace  at  last,  "that  you 
think  you  could  n't?" 

"I  hardly  know  what  I  mean." 

"Is  there  any  one  else?" 

"I'm  not  engaged  to  any  one." 

"But  there  is  some  one  who  wishes  you  to  be?" 

She  mutely  nodded.  She  could  not  say  even  to  herself 
how  dear  she  found  him  in  that  hour,  how  much  the  man 
of  her  girlish  dreams.  But  there  was  some  one  else. 

"And  you're  not  sure  about  him  either?" 

"There  seems  so  much  to  be  thought  about,"  she 
said,  "so  much  to  be  gone  through.  I  —  have  n't  found 
myself.  You  mean  so  much  to  me,  Eustace  — " 

"Do  you  mind  telling  me,  is  it  Adam  Frear?" 

"How  did  you  guess?" 

"It  just  came  to  me.  He's  in  Russia  now,  is  n't  he? 
Well,  you  have  n't  accepted  him  yet,  and  that's  some 
thing  in  my  favor."  There  was  something  more  than  an 
effort  to  take  it  cheerfully  in  his  voice.  "And  you  like  me 
rather  well,  don't  you?  It  seems  to  you  we'd  get  on 
together?" 

"It's  more  than  getting  on,  Eustace." 

"  Yes.  I  want  you  to  want  to  be  married  to  me  the  way 
I  want  you."  He  rose  and  stood  looking  down  at  her,  a  lit 
tle  pale,  but  with  the  confidence  of  a  man  whose  business 
makes  it  inexpedient  that  he  should  ever  be  thrown  out 
of  himself.  "I  might  n't  be  able  to  resist  taking  you  on 


NO.  26  JAYNE  STREET  199 

any  terms  if  you'd  come,  but  on  the  whole  I  am  rather 
glad,  since  you  are  n't  sure  of  yourself,  that  there  is 
somebody  else.  I  '11  know,  if  you  take  me,  that  you  know 
why." 

"I  feel  it  is  very  weak  of  me  not  to  be  able  to 
know." 

"You  should  n't.  Frear  is  a  fine  fellow.  He's  the  best 
of  the  Radical  lot.  But  somehow  I  don't  see  you  married 
to  him."  He  took  a  turn  up  and  down  the  room.  "It's 
not  jealousy  makes  me  say  this,  Neith.  But  Frear  calls 
himself  a  Radical,  and  in  America  that  means  some 
thing  more  than  that  he  has  new  and  different  views 
about  how  Society  should  be  run.  A  lot  of  fellows  are 
having  new  views.  It  means  that  he  is  made  up  differ 
ently  from  —  from  the  sort  you've  always  known. 

"I  see  how  you  are  beginning  to  feel  about  things. 
There's  nothing  that  has  come  home  to  us  Over  There 
like  the  conviction  that  a  lot  of  things  over  here  are  go 
ing  to  be  different  after  this.  But,  Neith,  we  are  n't  going 
to  be  so  different,  you  and  I.  Frear 's  different. 

"You  were  talking  about  bunk  awhile  ago"  —  Eus 
tace  let  himself  out  for  extended  flight.  "It's  true,  all 
right,  that  there  has  been  too  much  bunk  in  the  way  our 
kind  of  people  have  lived,  bunk  in  our  religion  and  our 
politics.  The  Army's  full  of  bunk.  But  you  don't  want  to 
forget,  Neith,  that  the  Radicals  have  their  own  kind  of 
bunk,  too." 

She  saw  that.  Saw,  too,  that  Eustace  Rittenhouse  was 
a  bigger  man  and  finer  than  she  had  ever  thought  him. 


200  NO.  26  JAYNE  STREET 

She  had  a  vision  of  him  like  this,  high  up,  flying  steadily 
in  the  face  of  certain  death  or  disaster,  simple  and  col 
lected.  It  was  as  though  she  heard  the  roar  of  planes  sail 
ing  in  sun -filled  space.  But  all  she  heard  was  the  children 
playing  in  Jayne  Street,  and  the  quiet  voice  of  Eustace 
Rittenhouse. 

"So  you  see,  I  don't  feel  that  the  case  is  quite  hope 
less.  Of  course,  if  you  find  Frear  is  all  you  want  of  a  man, 
nobody  will  wish  you  happiness  more  heartily  than  I 
will.  But  you  must  n't  think  it  small  of  me  if  I  see  a  pos 
sibility  that  you  might  n't  find  in  him  all  that  you  are 
looking  for.  Neith  —  you  are  not  crying  about  this?'* 

She  put  up  a  hand  to  check  the  falling  tears.  "I  think 
I  am  a  very  poor  sort  for  you  to  be  so  fine  about, 
Eustace." 

"You're  the  finest  ever!  Look  here,  Neith,  if  I  can 
get  Beardsley  to  let  me  off  about  four,  can  you  come 
with  me?  I  know  where  I  can  get  a  car.  We'll  take  a 
spin  down  to  the  Aviation  Grounds  and  have  dinner. 
After  to-day,  you  know,  anything  might  happen." 

XIV 

§41 

FROM  the  beginning  of  war  activities,  Neith  put  herself 
unreservedly  in  Mrs.  Kendries's  hands.  Not,  however, 
without  having  been  invited. 

"You  have  served  your  time  in  England  at  relief," 
said  Mrs.  Kendries.  "Come  and  work  with  us  at  the 


NO.  26  JAYNE  STREET  201 

things  which  will  remain."  For  with  the  simple-minded 
ness  which  went  with  their  singleness  of  sight,  the  Ken- 
dries  supposed  that  the  pressure  of  war  could  be  turned 
to  the  correction  of  many  of  those  awkward  complex 
ities  of  modem  living  which  everybody  admits  and  no 
one  takes  the  initiative  to  set  right.  It  was  the  hope  that 
life  would  issue  from  this  stress  a  simpler  and  more  liv 
able  affair  that  had  brought  them  roundly  to  the  support 
of  the  Administration.  It  was  the  completeness  of  the 
failure  of  those  who  had  the  direction  of  war  activities 
in  charge,  to  achieve  any  simplification  whatever,  that 
drove  them  later  from  its  side. 

But  in  the  first  stages  there  was  a  pleasant  feeling 
abroad  that  the  American  people  was  about  to  see  itself 
issue  into  world  affairs  in  the  figure  of  easy  competency, 
just  touched,  admirably  touched,  with  a  romantic  gen 
erosity.  There  was  no  doubt  about  the  unanimity  with 
which,  as  Adam  Frear  had  expressed  it,  once  Washing 
ton  had  called  the  tune  of  the  "Star-Spangled  Banner," 
the  masses  fell  into  step  behind  it.  And  even  from  those 
who  descried  in  him  the  figure  of  the  personal  devil  of 
Democracy,  there  was  very  little  objection  to  what 
Eustace  Rittenhouse  had  called  the  "little  American 
Joss  "  at  the  head  of  the  procession.  Efficiency !  American 
efficiency!  As  the  phrase  sped  in  the  nature  of  a  watch 
word  from  point  to  point  of  the  national  consciousness, 
there  was  a  flash  of  the  spirit  as  of  suddenly  uplifted 
swords.  And  where  the  swords  rang  on  the  breastplate  of 
American  complacency,  in  the  sound  that  came  back  to 


202  NO.  26  JAYNE  STREET 

the  waiting  ear  of  thousands  of  American  women,  the 
note  was  flat. 

There  was  nothing  in  Neith's  European  experience  to 
give  her  the  measure  of  that  vast,  interrelated  organiza 
tion  of  women  which  is  at  once  the  amazement  and  the 
weakness  of  American  feminism.  Amazing  it  is  in  its  ex 
tent  and  working  efficiency  and  enfeebling  in  its  creation 
of  a  milieu  which  keeps  the  best  of  them  turning  about 
and  about  with  a  great  waste  of  effort  to  coordinate  be 
fore  anything  can  be  done.  Second  only  to  the  thrill  with 
which  she  now  took  in  the  capacity  and  close- woven 
texture  of  the  eight  or  ten  million  affiliated  and  feder 
ated  women's  organizations,  was  the  amazement  with 
which  she  saw  it  turned  back,  as  an  instrument  of  social 
coordination,  from  the  copper-riveted  surfaces  of  what 
for  the  time  she  had  to  classify,  at  Lutra  Dunham's  sug 
gestion,  as  the  "Business  Mind." 

Long  afterward  it  occurred  to  Neith  that  if  the  best 
of  the  women  had  been  less  completely  netted  into  the 
organization;  had  there  been  more  scope  within  the 
mass  for  free  movement  of  such  women  as  Rose  Matlock 
and  Lutra  Dunham;  had  American  women  in  their  new 
found  passion  for  togetherness  developed  a  little  of 
man's  capacity  for  free  leadership  and  blind  following 
they  might  not  have  come  so  badly  off  from  the  encoun 
ter.  As  it  was,  the  bond  of  federation  held,  accentuated 
as  it  was  by  loyalty  to  the  common  cause,  and  the  whole 
mass  of  the  most  informed,  socially  the  most  experi 
enced,  group  of  women  in  the  world,  gave  slowly  back. 


NO.  26  JAYNE  STREET  203 

Between  them  and  the  possibility  which  glimmered  so 
brightly  on  their  horizon  for  a  while,  of  the  triumphant 
issue  of  a  more  personal  order  and  efficiency  in  social  liv 
ing,  drifted  the  rank  and  file  of  American  business  effi 
ciency.  Efficiency,  that  is,  conceived  of  and  perfected  in 
the  struggle  of  every  man  against  every  other. 

By  the  end  of  the  first  four  months  of  war,  Neith  had 
to  accept  the  judgment  of  such  women  as  Mrs.  Sher- 
rod  and  Mrs.  Kendries  for  the  fact.  There  was  not  in 
America  a  woman  of  the  first  rank  of  capacity  and  intel 
ligence  in  a  position  of  real  power  toward  the  activities 
brought  into  being  by  war.  There  were  some  honorary 
appointments,  but  all  the  really  formative  and  admin 
istrative  business  of  food,  child  care,  nursing,  and  spir 
itual  welfare,  were  in  the  hands  of  men.  Here  and  there, 
floated  across  the  scene,  and  upborne  by  that  very  sol 
idarity  of  organization,  women  of  the  third  and  fourth 
rank  maintained  themselves  in  the  favor  of  the  Business 
Mind  by  not  presenting  to  it  any  knowledge,  or  any  sort 
of  expertness,  different  from  its  own.  Nowhere  was  the 
reservoir  of  administrative  power  among  women,  accu 
mulated  in  fifty  years  of  active  social  betterment,  tapped 
in  the  common  interest. 

Few  of  these  things  came  to  Neith  dramatically  or  in 
concrete  instances.  All  the  atmosphere  in  which  she 
moved  was  charged  with  a  sense  of  profound  disagree 
ment  between  what  American  men  were  doing  and 
American  women  could  have  done. 

It  was  true  that  Neith  had  to  take  very  largely  the 


204  NO.  26  JAYNE  STREET 

word  of  women  like  Madelon  Sherrod  and  Lutra  Dun 
ham  both  for  things  as  they  were  and  might  have  been. 
But  it  was  also  true  that  she  always  found  them  borne 
out  by  such  facts  as  she  could  muster.  And  if  in  the  in 
tervals  she  reverted  to  her  own  kind,  to  Bruce  and  Milli- 
cent,  for  example,  and  to  the  Aunts  and  Mrs.  Carteret 
Keys,  it  was  always  to  return  on  the  rebound  to  a  pro- 
founder  allegiance  to  the  things  vouched  for  by  her  new 
friends.  One  could  n't,  for  instance,  go  back  of  the  re 
ports  of  the  public  health  experts  on  the  increase  of 
malnutrition  among  American  children,  and  the  refusal 
of  the  Food  Administration  to  take  into  account  the 
wage-earning  conditions  of  some  five  or  six  millions  of 
American  mothers.  "Hewing,"  as  Lutra  Dunham  put  it, 
"the  American  family  in  pieces  before  the  sacred  cook- 
stove." 

Lutra  was  very  explicit  as  to  the  kind  of  citizenry 
that  was  produced  by  a  generation  or  two  of  underfed 
children.  "One  in  five,"  she  quoted  from  the  health  re 
ports,  "and  some  of  them  put  it  higher.  Russia  .  .  . 
Poland  .  .  .  unstable,  oversexed.  Ill-balanced  minds  and 
irresponsible  moral  natures  ..." 

She  said  things  like  that  to  the  complacent  stock 
brokers  and  electric  light  men  and  insurance  men  who 
had  found  their  way,  with  the  best  intentions,  into 
administrative  committees,  and  who  dropped  into  her 
office  occasionally  to  show  their  open-mindedness.  Un 
fortunately  she  said  too  much.  To  the  mind  nurtured 
in  the  faith  that  the  American  woman  is  the  enshrined 


NO.  26  JAYNE  STREET  205 

and  privileged  product  of  American  efficiency,  its  bright 
flourish  to  the  sun,  to  be  invited  suddenly  to  provide 
for  the  underfed  offspring  of  some  millions  of  mothers, 
neither  privileged  nor  enshrined,  is  an  upsetting  experi 
ence.  The  representatives  of  American  efficiency  went 
away  from  Lutra  Dunham's  office  in  the  state  of  men 
who  had  been  shown  the  dromedary  and  decided  that 
there  was  no  such  animal. 
There  were  hints  even  of  a  profounder  misconception. 

§42 

"Are  you  quite  sure,  Neith,  dear,"  Millicent  had 
asked  her  one  evening,  having  invited  her  to  an  informal 
meal  for  the  express  purpose,  Neith  was  aware,  of  set 
ting  her  right  —  "Are  you  sure  Mrs.  Kendries  is  the 
proper  person  to  have  at  the  head  of  such  a  responsible 
committee?" 

This  was  along  in  the  hot  months  when  Mrs.  Kendries 
had  given  up  hope  of  effecting  any  improvement  in  mod 
ern  living  through  war  administration  and  had  trans 
ferred  her  activities  to  the  employment  service,  to  se 
cure,  if  she  could,  more  livable  conditions  for  married 
workers  on  the  one  point  in  which  the  efficiency  expert 
was  really  expert,  that  of  wages.  Millicent  had  taken  the 
children  to  the  country  very  early,  but  she  kept  the  town 
house  open,  and  from  time  to  time,  as  Bruce  could  be 
spared  from  Washington,  charged  herself  with  the  busi 
ness  of  overlooking,  from  her  own  point  of  view,  her 
cousin's  progress  in  Americanization. 


206  NO.  26  JAYNE  STREET 

Millicent  was  nothing  if  not  tactful.  She  recognized 
it  as  an  excellent  thing  for  her  cousin  to  work  off  this 
eccentric  streak,  the  product,  no  doubt,  of  her  foreign 
education,  before  she  married  Eustace  Rittenhouse  and 
settled  down.  It  seemed  the  likeliest  thing  in  the  world 
that  Neith  should  marry  Eustace.  One  heard  of  their 
being  seen  together  an  extraordinary  number  of  times. 
But  there  were  limits  of  eccentricity  beyond  which  it 
was  desirable,  for  her  own  future,  that  Neith  should  n't 
go.  Really,  young  men  were  often  put  quite  out  of  touch 
by  exhibitions  of  radicalism  in  young  women.  One  saw 
such  things.  The  report  Bruce  had  brought  home  of  a 
recent  interview  with  Mrs.  Kendries,  with  Neith,  in  the 
qapacity  of  confidential  secretary,  looking  on,  had  been 
—  well,  if  not  alarming,  at  least  calling  for  the  touch 
of  a  cousinly  hand. 

It  was  a  case,  however,  demanding  tact,  as  one  saw 
by  the  instant  bristling  of  Neith's  interest  in  defense  of 
Lutra  Dunham. 

"If  you  know  anybody  more  experienced  and  capa 
ble  — "  she  began. 

"Oh,  she's  immensely  bright  and  capable,  I've  no 
doubt."  Millicent  was  just.  "But  the  temptation  to  use 
her  position  for  furthering  those  extraordinary  ideas  of 
hers  ...  At  a  time  like  this  when  one  can't  be  too  care 
ful.  Bruce  was  really  shocked." 

"So  was  I,"  Neith  agreed,  going  over  bag  and  bag 
gage  to  the  opposition;  "I  never  expected  to  see  Bruce 
figuring  as  an  advocate  of  breaking  up  the  family." 


NO.  26  JAYNE  STREET  207 

"Neith!" 

"Well,  really,  Millicent,  that  is  what  it  came  to. 
Bruce  wanted  fifty  women  for  the  Airplane  Department. 
He  wanted  women  of  more  than  ordinary  capacity  and 
expertness,  and,  as  Mrs.  Kendries  told  him,  that  class 
of  women  workers  are  more  than  likely  to  be  married 
and  to  have  a  baby  or  two.  Bruce  wanted  them  to  go  off 
to  work  at  a  place  where  there  was  no  possible  provision 
for  them  or  their  families,  and  Mrs.  Kendries  told  him 
that  until  he  was  willing  to  make  such  provision  she 
could  n't  get  the  workers  for  him.  And  so  far  as  I  could 
discover,  Bruce  not  only  declined  to  make  such  pro 
vision,  but  seemed  annoyed  at  having  the  fact  of  the 
families  thrust  upon  him." 

"Bruce  felt  that  this  was  a  case  where  patriotism 
should  have  come  before  the  personal  consideration." 

"Well,  I  did  n't  know  that  it  had  become  patriotic 
for  women  to  neglect  their  babies,"  Neith  found  herself 
amazingly  saying. 

"You  absurd  creature!"  Millicent's  tact  and  sweet 
ness  positively  shone  out.  "It's  always  worth  while  to 
touch  you  up  to  see  your  lovely  loyalty  to  your  friends. 
But  if  you  are  really  going  to  become  a  good  American, 
you  know,  you  must  n't  let  yourself  be  influenced  too 
much  by  all  this  foreignness  — " 

"Mrs.  Kendries  is  n't  a  foreigner." 

"She's  a  Socialist,  and  that's  foreign."  Millicent  tri 
umphed.  "It's  easy  to  see  what  she's  leading  to.  State 
care  of  the  children.  Such  a  shirking  of  responsibility. 


208  NO.  26  JAYNE  STREET 

Not  that  I  want  to  go  into  that,"  she  hastily  conceded. 
"But  Bruce  was  shocked  at  the  idea  of  her  using  her 
position,  a  place  of  public  trust  really,  for  the  advance 
ment  of  her  peculiar  ideas.  Of  course,  Bruce  would  n't 
say  anything.  He  has  the  greatest  respect  for  Mrs.  Ken- 
dries  's  ability.  But  if  it  should  come  to  the  ears  of  —  er 
—  people  who  are  responsible  — " 

Amid  all  the  possibilities,  which  suddenly  opened  up 
before  her,  of  saying  the  wrong  thing,  Neith  said  nothing 
at  all. 

§43 

"But  could  they,  Lutra,"  she  inquired  at  the  first 
opportunity,  "take  your  work  away  from  you  just  be 
cause  they  don't  understand  it?" 

"They  won't."  Mrs.  Kendries  was  confident.  "Direck 
is  too  important  to  Labor  adjustments  right  now  to  run 
any  risk  of  offending  him.  But  that's  nothing  to  what 
they  do  where  they  dare."  And  as  she  said  that,  the  force 
of  many  things  that  had  been  going  on  around  her 
almost  unnoticed  began  to  dawn  on  Neith. 

One  by  one  figures  the  most  outstanding  in  the  Radi 
cal  world  had  disappeared  from  view.  Some  of  these  had 
been,  on  the  whole,  so  affronting  in  their  opposition  to 
things  as  they  were,  that  public  consent  had  closed  over 
them  as  they  went  down  almost  in  silence.  It  had  con 
tinued,  however,  to  rise  against  mere  differences  of 
mode,  disloyalties,  not  to  the  State,  but  to  the  compla 
cent  conviction  of  universal  Tightness.  Practically  the 


NO.  26  JAYNE  STREET  209 

whole  staff  of  The  Proletariat  was  under  indictment 
as  Van  Harwood  had  predicted.  Hippolyte  Leninsky,  so 
Fleeta  had  told  her,  had  had  his  paper  suppressed  for 
advising  young  Russians  in  the  United  States  to  enlist 
and  acquaint  themselves  with  the  military  art  against 
the  needs  of  the  Social  Revolution.  The  explicit  charge 
had  been  that  his  paper  was  an  Anarchist  organ. 

Fleeta  was  in  her  element,  furnishing  succor  to  the 
victims  of  the  Espionage  Act  under  the  patronage  of 
Mrs.  Carteret  Keys.  She  was  now  a  secretary.  The  first 
months  of  the  war  had  been  a  bad  time  for  secretaries. 
By  the  necessities  of  their  trade,  being  parties  of  the 
opposition,  they  had  been  left  gasping  by  the  sudden 
rush  of  their  patronesses  to  the  support  of  the  Adminis 
tration.  Some  of  them,  after  the  briefest  possible  inter 
val,  had  reappeared  in  the  interest  of  the  Chocolate 
Fund,  or  collecting  tobacco  money  for  the  Marines. 
Neith,  in  her  excursions  to  the  East  Side,  used  to  meet 
the  apostle  of  voluntary  parenthood  in  a  state  of  apo 
plectic  inhibition  at  the  police  proscription  of  her  use  of 
the  argument  of  "cannon  fodder"  for  the  curtailment  of 
the  proletarian  family.  The  young  woman  who  had  pro 
posed  herself  as  official  pamphleteer  to  the  Peace  Asso 
ciation  had  got  herself  involved  in  a  charge  of  inciting 
to  sedition  in  India,  along  with  a  group  of  rather  footless, 
and  expatriated  young  Hindoos. 

"Already  we  are  worse  than  England! "  Neith  expostu 
lated  to  Eustace  Rittenhouse  on  one  of  those  occasions, 
of  which  he  afforded  her  the  greatest  possible  number, 


210  NO.  26  JAYNE  STREET 

for  making  her  feel  the  value  to  him  of  the  time  she 
was  able  to  give  him.  They  were  lunching  at  the  Brevoort 
and  had  had  the  subject  brought  freshly  to  their  minds 
by  the  recent  sentence,  of  unimaginable  severity,  of  a 
Labor  leader.  The  man  had  publicly  advised  his  fellows 
to  lose  no  point  of  advantage  of  war  pressure  for  their 
own  private  war  against  oppression. 

"That's  because  the  English  are  more  or  less  used  to 
differences  of  opinion  among  themselves.  It  is  entirely 
normal  that  classes  so  widely  differentiated  should  have 
different  ways  of  looking  at  things.  We've  the  Demo 
cratic  tradition  of  unanimity  to  keep  up  here." 

"But  why  should  we  keep  it  up?" 

"Because  if  we  don't  all  like  what  we've  got  over 
here,  it  is  a  sure  sign  we  won't  always  have  it.  If  enough 
fellows  keep  on  saying  right  out  loud  that  they  don't 
like  it,  first  thing  you  know,  there  will  be  a  change." 

"I  can  never  make  out,  Eustace,  just  where  you  be 
long.  Are  you  a  Radical  or  —  are  n't  you?" 

"You  can  put  it,  at  least,  that  I  don't  want  to  swap 
horses  in  the  middle  of  the  stream."  Eustace,  she  knew, 
was  beginning  to  be  seriously  troubled  about  delays  in 
the  Air  Service. 

There  was  something  particularly  fine  about  Eustace 
these  days.  It  was  as  if  he  had  become  the  better  friend 
by  being  admittedly  the  lover.  Which  made  it  impos 
sible  for  Neith  to  say  to  him  that  the  sum  of  all  this  un 
expectedness  on  the  part  of  her  country,  was  to  bring 
her  nearer  to  Adam  Frear.  She  saw,  at  least,  that  Frear 


NO.  26  JAYNE  STREET 

saw  his  way  toward  light  and  progressive  social  solu 
tions.  More  and  more,  as  the  deep-seated  feminine 
love  of  order  and  relativity  cried  aloud  in  her,  she  found 
herself  resting  her  decisions  on  his  return.  And  as  if  he 
divined  her  state,  and  her  delicacy  in  not  speaking  of  it, 
Eustace  himself  began  to  talk  of  Frear. 

"If  you  ask  me  where  I  am,"  he  answered,  "I'll  say 
that  up  to  the  beginning  of  the  war  I  was  not  far  behind 
Adam  Frear.  You'd  have  to  have  been  brought  up  as 
most  young  men  were  before  him,  to  appreciate  the 
effect  he  has  had.  When  I  was  a  kid,  Father  gave  me  a 
quarter  to  hurrah  for  —  McKinley,  I  guess  it  was.  At 
that  age  I  would  have  hollered  my  head  off  for  a  quarter. 

"And  that's  how  I  came  to  be  a  Republican. 

"  But  Frear  has  changed  all  that.  So  many  fellows 
have  come  along  in  his  trail  that  we  have  to  remind  our 
selves  every  little  while  that  he  was  the  first  to  teach  us 
any  kind  of  reasonableness  about  making  up  our  politi 
cal  opinions. 

"It  could  n't  have  all  been  easy  going,  either."  Eus 
tace  sailed  up  into  that  clear  atmosphere  where  he  was 
at  home  and  could  give  every  honorable  advantage. 
"Ten  years  ago  the  political  gangsters  used  to  keep  pri 
vate  detectives  following  Frear  about  in  the  hope  of 
catching  him  in  something  discreditable." 

"Ah,  I'm  sure  they  never  did  that!" 

"You  may  be  sure  we'd  have  heard  of  it  if  they  had. 
And  yet,  in  a  way,  we  owe  it  to  Frear  that  a  political  re 
former  is  n't  necessarily  a  prig.  He  can  have  his  moral 


212  NO.  26  JAYNE  STEEET 

variations  the  same  as  other  people."  Neith  looked  up 
quickly,  anticipating  the  sting  of  personal  rancor,  in 
credible  from  Eustace,  but  found  him  amiably  occupied 
with  his  dessert.  He  went  on  presently,  doing  himself  full 
justice  in  his  rival's  behalf.  "Up  until  Frear's  time,  the 
only  claim  a  political  reformer  had  for  pitching  into  the 
other  fellows,  was  a  clear  record  on  his  own  account.  But 
Frear  has  made  us  see  politics  as  a  method,  don't  you 
know.  All  you  have  to  show  now,  is  a  clear  record  for  your 
method,  whether  it  does  really  bring  a  large  return  for 
the  general  good,  I  mean.  A  political  inventor  can  have 
his  private  life  to  himself  now  the  same  as  an  automobile 
maker.  All  we  want  to  know  is  how  the  machine  works, 
and  if  it  is  worth  the  money. 

"Well"  —  he  brought  himself  back  to  his  starting- 
point.  "What  we  have  now  in  this  censorship  business  is 
just  a  sort  of  reversion.  It  is  n't  so  long  ago  that  it  was 
perfectly  good  form  to  say  any  damnable  thing  you 
could  think  of  about  a  man  who  differed  from  you  on  a 
question  of  politics  .  .  . 

"Besides,  things  are  pretty  comfortable  over  here, 
considering.  I'll  bet,"  concluded  Major  Rittenhouse, 
leaning  back  to  enjoy  his  cigar,  "that  there  are  a  lot  of 
people  who  are  real  homesick  for  an  excuse  to  pitch  into 
somebody." 

Thinking  all  this  over,  what  stuck  in  Neith's  mind, 
beside  the  characteristic  American  good-humor  of  Eus 
tace's  position,  was  the  faint  suggestion  of  a  warning  to 
be  prepared  to  find  in  Adam  Frear  some  of  those  varia- 


NO.  26  JAYNE  STREET  213 

tions  of  personal  behavior  lie  had  been  described  as  ad 
mitting  into  the  conduct  of  a  political  career.  It  struck 
her  definitely  that  this  had  come  as  a  warning,  and  for 
the  second  time. 

She  had  n't  escaped,  indeed,  under  Fleeta's  tutelage, 
hearing  all  sorts  of  gossip  about  the  inner  circle  of  Radi 
calism.  All  at  once  the  pale,  expanding  cat's  eyes  of 
Sadie  Comyns  drifted  across  her  vision.  That  sort  of 
thing!  But  one  couldn't  take  that  seriously  in  con 
nection  with  those  two  young  things.  They  were  as 
obviously  married  as  if  they  had  had  said  over  them 
every  one  of  the  three  or  four  ceremonies  to  which  their 
mixed  blood  entitled  them.  And  yet  she  supposed  that 
before  the  war  .  .  . 

One  didn't,  however,  think  of  such  things  in  con 
nection  with  Adam  Frear.  And  lest  she  accuse  herself 
of  having  thought  of  them,  she  reminded  herself,  the 
next  time  she  saw  Fleeta  Spence,  to  send  her  love  to 
Sadie  and  to  say  that  she  was  still  expecting  her  at 
Twenty-Six  Jayne  Street. 

§44 

There  were  other  points  at  which  Neith  touched  the 
incessant  stream  of  women's  war  activities.  Points  which, 
if  they  warmed  her  at  times  to  that  sense  of  the  solidar 
ity  of  sex  which  she  had  lacked,  at  other  times  crowded 
her  back  on  a  profounder  communism  of  interest  in 
which  there  was  neither  sex  nor  solidarity,  but  a  shoul 
dering  sense  of  progression,  She  had  moments  of  being 


214  NO.  26  JAYNE  STREET 

glad  to  sink  her  identity  in  the  crowd  of  unimportant 
women,  from  the  click  of  whose  needles  and  the  flash  of 
whose  fingers  poured  that  flood  of  material  alleviation 
for  which,  as  she  knew,  conditions  in  Europe  so  loudly 
cried.  She  found  herself  perpetually  irritated  and  en 
tertained  by  the  Aunts,  playing  the  bygone  game  of 
Society  with  war  counters,  scrouging  for  precedent  and 
planting  the  Stars  and  Stripes  at  the  head  of  their  visit 
ing  lists,  admitting  their  Country,  under  its  extenu 
ations,  into  New  York's  most  exclusive  circles.  There 
was  Millicent  and  her  group  of  gracious  and  nearly  futile 
activities.  And  there  was  the  Stage  Women's  War  Relief 
where  Neith  used  often  to  go  with  Mrs.  Sherrod.  Where 
she  never  went  without  some  fresh  amazement. 

Stage  women,  as  Neith  had  known  them  abroad, 
were  Figures  of  Romance.  They  were  Genius,  moving 
always  in  the  aura  of  their  art.  They  were  either  that,  or 
they  were  something  else  which  did  not  enter  into  the 
social  count.  In  America  they  were  a  Force.  If  they 
lacked,  as  one  could  n't  help  seeing  at  times  that  they 
did,  that  rich  heritage  of  the  European  past,  one  saw  at 
least  that  they  had  the  future  in  their  hands.  They 
asked  nothing  of  Society;  they  made,  as  they  moved, 
their  own  milieu.  More  astonishing  still  they  asked 
nothing  of  men. 

If  it  were  true,  as  Madelon  Sherrod  had  said,  that  be 
tween  their  public  and  their  art  there  was  a  felted  wall 
of  men's  opinions,  they  had,  at  least  for  their  social 
function,  won  complete  exemption.  They  could  do  what 


NO.  26  JAYNE  STREET 

no  other  group  of  women  had  succeeded  in  doing,  par 
ticipate  in  the  war  on  their  own  terms  and  by  their 
chosen  representatives. 

Neith  was  enormously  interested  in  any  explanation 
that  Mrs.  Sherrod  had  to  give  her. 

"It's  because,"  Mrs.  Sherrod  insisted,  "we  have  a 
past,  a  tradition  of  professionalism.  A  long  past  of  com 
mon  experiences  and  common  objectives.  None  of  these 
other  organizations  go  back  any  farther  than  the  Civil 
War,  and  most  of  them  don't  go  back  to  that.  In  respect 
to  their  experiences  and  privileges  the  others  are  nou- 
veaux  riches." 

"Lutra  Dunham  says  it's  because  you  are  always 
dealing  with  men  just  as  men.  You  don't  have  to  deal 
with  them  continually  as  business  men." 

"You  must  n't  let  Lutra  put  you  too  far  off  on  that 
tack.  We  have  our  encounters  with  the  'Business 
Mind,'  I  can  tell  you.  It  must  be,  besides  what  I  have 
said,  that  we  have  always  been  recognized  as  excep 
tional,  as  something  different  from  just  woman." 

She  had  the  air  of  considering  that  phase  of  it  for  the 
first  time. 

"Yes,  that  must  be  it.  From  the  first  we've  been  al 
lowed  to  be  different,  we've  been  born  outside  the  pale. 
We've  had  enormous  concessions  to  our  conduct  as 
women  on  the  ground  of  our  being  primarily  players. 
That's  what  is  the  trouble  with  Lutra.  She  did  n't  come 
onto  the  scene  as  a  social  expert.  She  was  born  a  lady 
and  she  '11  have  to  prove  that  ladies  can  be  expert  at  any- 


216  NO.  26  JAYNE  STREET 

thing.  They  can't,  most  of  them.  You  must  n't,  honey, 
make  the  mistake  of  judging  American  women  by  the 
little  group  you're  seeing  most  of.  There  are  far  more 
women  like  Millicent  and  Emmy  in  America  than  there 
are  like  Lutra  Dunham  and  Rose  Matlock  and  me." 

"There's  nobody  like  you,  if  it  comes  to  that,  Made- 
Ion.  Don't  imagine  I  don't  know  that." 

"Well,  then,  I'll  tell  you  something  about  me.  I  am 
by  no  means  the  woman  I  might  have  been  if  there  had 
been  more  like  me.  You  know  what  great  actresses  are 
in  Europe,  and  that  I  am  not  in  their  class.  Oh,  I  don't 
mean  that  I  have  n't  their  gifts.  I  have  measured  myself 
against  them,  and  I  hope  I  may  be  believed  in  saying 
without  vanity  that  there  is  nothing  the  greatest  of 
them  has  done  that  I  couldn't  have  done  with  the 
Public  closer  to  me." 

"Does  it  count  for  so  much,  the  Public?" 

"To  an  artist,  to  an  artist  of  the  theater  especially. 
We're  captive  balloons  really.  We  soar  high  over  their 
heads,  they  look  up.  But  we  must  n't  break  the  tether, 
or  presently  we'll  find  ourselves  out  of  sight  and  the 
Public  gazing  at  some  nearer  bubble  at  the  end  of  its 
string. 

"  But  it  can't  be  like  that  with  the  specialists  in  ideas. 
People  like  Rose  Matlock  and  Lutra  and  Adam  Frear 
can  go  clear  out  of  sight,  and  after  a  while  when  the 
Public  catches  up,  it  thinks  all  the  more  of  them." 

Neith  and  the  actress  were  having  tea  in  one  of  those 
places  of  spendid  resort  where  it  was  expedient  for 


NO.  26  JAYNE  STREET 

Madelon  to  show  herself  occasionally.  They  had  just 
come  from  the  Stage  Women's  rooms  where  Rose  Mat- 
lock  and  a  woman  from  the  Department  of  Labor  had 
been  telling  them  how  the  efficiency  of  wage-working 
women  had  been  pushed  down  by  the  unconscious 
traditionalism  of  the  employer's  attitude.  It  had  n't,  in 
fact,  been  able  to  sustain  itself  past  the  point  at  which, 
as  women  merely,  they  had  been  able  to  hold  the  at 
tention  of  employers  as  men.  It  was  to  this  Neith  pres 
ently  reverted. 

"I  suppose  Rose  Matlock  is  out  of  sight  already." 

"If  she  were,  people  could  forget  her.  The  trouble 
with  Rose  is  that  she 's  tied  herself  so  tight  to  all  our  se 
cret  convictions  that  we  can't  help  feeling  the  tug  of  her 
in  a  direction  we  are  n't  quite  ready  to  go." 

"But  suppose  one  did?  Want  to  go,  I  mean.  What 
would  happen  to  one?  One  like  me.  I  have  n't  any  gifts, 
you  know." 

"Well,  you  haven't  your  living  to  make,  that's  to 
your  advantage.  But  don't  suppose  you  would  n't  have 
to  throw  out  some  sort  of  ballast.  Rose  flies  high. 

"After  all,"  she  said  a  little  later,  "we've  two  classes 
in  America,  we've  the  majority  and  the  minority. 
You'll  have  to  choose.  You  may  think  you  can  select 
the  best  things  out  of  both  and  belong  to  neither,  but 
you  can't.  I  thought  I  could  do  that.  In  my  art,  you 
know.  I  thought  I  could  have  real  art  and  real  popular 
ity  at  the  same  time.  But  I  had  to  choose.  So  will  you." 

"Ah,  I've  chosen." 


218  NO.  26  JAYNE  STREET 

They  were  silent  a  moment  together.  Madelon  rolled 
and  lit  a  cigarette  and  let  it  die  out  between  her  fingers. 

"Have  you?"  she  said  at  last.  There  was  the  least, 
delicate  nuance  of  an  inflection. 

"No,"  said  Neith,  after  consideration.  "No,  I've 
been  chosen.  I  don't  know  why.  I  know  almost  nothing 
of  the  things  I  hear  you  and  the  Kendries  and  Miss 
Matlock  talk  about,  but  somehow  I  know  I  am  elected 
to  the  minority." 

At  the  back  of  her  mind  there  was  the  suggestion 
that  she  had  been  elected  there  by  Adam  Frear's  need 
of  her,  but  it  was  not  Adam  whose  figure  she  saw  rising 
to  meet  her  from  the  top  of  her  stairway  as  she  returned 
from  the  office  a  few  evenings  later.  It  rose  expectantly 
in  the  dusk  and  leaned  above  her  from  the  banister, 
peering  down  with  the  triangular  chin  and  yellowing 
cat's  eyes  of  Sadie  Leninsky. 

XV 

§45 

"On,  Sadie!"  Neith's  welcome  was  touched  slightly 
with  dismay.  It  was  somehow  in  the  air  that  the  girl  had 
been  waiting  for  her  an  unconscionable  time.  "Here  at 
last!  and  where 's  Hippolyte?" 

"In  jail!"  Sadie  rang  out.  Then,  with  a  sudden  rush 
of  purely  personal  necessity,  "Oh,  Miss  Schuyler,  I 
must  see  him,  I  must!" 

"Of  course  you  must.  That's  easily  managed!"  She 


NO.  26  JAYNE  STREET  219 

said  the  first  comforting  thing  that  occurred  to  her  as 
she  fumbled  at  the  keyhole  of  her  door.  "When  did  it 
happen?" 

"Yesterday,  about  five  o'clock.  When  the  Workers" 

—  even  in  her  anxiety  Sadie  capitalized  the  Workers 
with  her  voice  —  "were  coming  home.  He  was  distribut 
ing  pamphlets  along  with  Andre  Fredova  and  two  others 
on  Vesey  Street.  I  did  n't  know  until  this  morning  what 
had  happened.  All  night  long  I  was  expecting  him,  and 
this  morning  Mrs.  Schwartz  —  her  son  was  arrested,  too 

—  came  and  told  me.  We  went  over  to  the  jail,  but  they 
would  n't  let  us  in.  I  got  me  a  lawyer.  But  I  could  n't 
get  around  very  well  — " 

Neith  had  the  door  open  and  flashed  on  the  light.  She 
saw,  indeed,  that  the  poor  girl  was  in  no  condition  to  get 
about  on  anxious  errands. 

"Oh,  my  dear  — "  She  put  an  arm  around  her.  "You 
must  sit  down  at  once  and  let  me  get  you  some  supper. 
I  had  mine  at  a  restaurant  — " 

"Miss  Schuyler,  I  don't  want  no  eats,  honest  I 
don't  — "  The  aspiring  Intellectual  fell  back  in  extrem 
ity  on  the  speech  of  her  childhood.  "I  had  some  coffee 
off  Mrs.  Schwartz,  but  I  could  n't  keep  a  thing  on  my 
stomach,  not  till  I'd  heard  what's  happened  to  Hip- 
polyte." 

"Nothing  much  happens  to  men  in  jail,  Sadie." 

"Oh,  Miss  Schuyler,  you  don't  know.  You  don't 
know.  Maybe  not  to  the  likes  of  you.  But  it's  different 
to  us." 


220  NO.  26  JAYNE  STREET 

"But  your  lawyer  saw  him!" 

"He  ain't  no  real  good  of  a  lawyer,  Miss  Schuyler. 
He's  just  a  Russian  Jew  like  Hippolyte,  and  he  did  n't 
see  him  alone.  Always  the  police  was  standing  there  and 
Hippolyte  could  n't  tell  him  nothing  what  had  really 
happened." 

"But  what  could  happen?  Men  are  arrested  for  their 
opinions  very  often  in  times  like  these.  It's  bad  for  you 
to  take  it  so  hard.  You  shall  see  him  in  the  morning.  I 
promise  you  that.  Now  you  must  rest  and  eat  some 
thing." 

"Miss  Schuyler,  please.  You  don't  know  about  such 
things.  But  Mr.  Frear.  He's  got  a  pull  with  the  police. 
He  could  get  me  in." 

"Mr.  Frear  is  in  Europe." 

"I  know  — but  I  thought—  Oh,  Miss  Schuyler,  I 
got  to  see  Hippolyte  to-night.  I  got  a  feeling  here"  — 
she  touched  her  thin  breast  —  "like  I  got  to  see  him  to 
night." 

Neith  was  extraordinarily  touched.  It  was  true  that 
Adam  Frear  was  so  much  to  these  people  that  the  mere 
rumor  of  her  nearness  to  him  made  her  an  object  of  hope 
and  confidence.  She  sat  down  beside  her  and  took  her 
hands. 

"Listen,  Sadie,  I  don't  know  anything  about  Ameri 
can  jails,  but  there  is  a  lawyer  who  manages  things  like 
this  for  Mr.  Frear.  I  '11  telephone  to  him  at  once  and  he 
will  know  what  we  can  do,  but  in  the  meantime  you 
must  do  exactly  as  I  say." 


NO.  26  JAYNE  STREET  221 

"Yes,  Miss  Schuyler.  But  I  must  see  Hippolyte  to 
night.  I  got  a  feeling  — " 

Neith  succeeded  in  reaching  the  attorney  who  had 
gone  down  to  Marcy  with  them  the  night  she  had  first 
met  the  little  pale-faced  Intellectual  from  New  Jersey. 
She  found  him  brisk  and  competent.  Should  he  come  over 
at  once?  No,  Neith  told  him  not  to  waste  all  that  time; 
find  out  all  he  could  first,  and  see  Hippolyte  if  possible. 

She  was  surprised  to  find  that  he  seemed  less  confi 
dent  of  being  able  to  accomplish  that  than  she  had 
expected. 

Mrs.  Kendries  was  out  of  town  for  the  moment,  and 
there  was  no  one  else  she  could  think  of  consulting.  She 
filled  in  the  interval  of  waiting  with  bustling  prepara 
tions  for  Sadie's  comfort.  Neith's  back  room  was  vacant, 
the  art  student  having  gone  off  on  an  impulse  of  patriot 
ism  to  make  more  money  a  week  than  she  had  ever  made 
at  art,  by  filling  cartridges.  In  the  course  of  half  an  hour 
Sadie  was  installed  there  in  one  of  Neith's  dressing- 
gowns,  and  persuaded  to  drink  hot  milk.  She  looked 
more  than  ever  catlike,  peering  out  with  her  burning 
eyes  over  the  white  counterpane,  a  poor,  hunted,  house 
less  cat,  overtaken  by  the  remorseless  function  of  ma 
ternity.  Was  it  the  very  defenselessness  of  her  estate, 
Neith  wondered,  poverty  of  body  and  of  opportunity, 
that  had  caused  her  to  be  overtaken  by  the  forces  of 
social-  reconstruction?  Did  creativeness  go  about  like 
that  seeking  whom  it  could  devour?  She  thought  of 
Millicent  and  the  complacent  ordering  of  her  own  occa- 


222  NO.  26  JAYNE  STREET 

sions,  secure  against  the  remotest  contingency  of  being 
touched  by  the  flame  of  Social  Revolution.  She  won 
dered  if  that  bright  capacity  for  holding  Life  at  arm's 
length,  to  make  terms  with  it,  which  she  had  so  admired 
in  American  women,  was  an  evidence  that  Life  had  n't, 
after  all,  much  use  for  them.  It  had  n't,  at  any  rate, 
stopped  to  make  terms  with  Sadie  Leninsky. 

"I  could  have  got  in,  maybe,"  Sadie  was  explaining, 
"if  I  had  thought  to  say  Hippolyte  was  my  husband. 
The  policeman  asked  me  that  and  maybe  I  would  of,  if 
I  had  thought.  But  Hippolyte  never  wanted  us  to  say 
things  like  that.  So  many  Radicals,  you  know,  aren't 
willing  to  say  right  out  what  they  are.  They  want  to  go 
along  kind  of  smooth  themselves  and  get  the  revolution 
by  group  action.  But  Hippolyte  always  said  he  was 
the  Revolution.  We  always  told  everybody  we  were  n't 
married.  So  I  said  no,  when  the  policeman  asked  me. 
But  I  wouldn't  have  said  it  if  I'd  have  thought.  Do 
you  think  it  would  have  made  any  difference  about 
letting  me  see  him?" 

"Very  likely.  The  policeman  could  n't  think  of  your 
having  any  business  seeing  Hippolyte  unless  you  belong 
to  him;  his  wife  or  his  sister." 

"I  wish  I  had  said  it.  I'm  not  noble  like  Hippolyte. 
Not  all  the  time.  I've  wanted  a  ring,  really."  She 
twisted  her  bare,  thin  little  hands  on  the  coverlet.  "Es 
pecially  since  —  since  the  baby's  coming.  You  don't 
think  it's  awfully  bourgeois  for  me  to  want  a  ring,  do 
you?" 


NO.  26  JAYNE  STREET  223 

"I  think  it's  very  natural  and  sweet,  and  I  think 
Hippolyte  would  think  so  if  he  knew."  Neith  smiled  at 
her.  "We  must  n't  let  the  Bourgeoisie  run  away  with  all 
the  charming  and  tender  things." 

She  saw  the  girl's  eyes  wander  over  her  own  well- 
manicured  fingers,  and  for  the  first  time  it  occurred  to 
her  that  some  sort  of  relationship  was  predicated  in 
Sadie's  mind  between  herself  and  Adam  Frear.  She  hur 
ried  them  both  away  from  the  suggestion. 

"You  haven't  told  me  yet  just  what  it  was  Hip 
polyte  was  doing  —  what  the  circulars  were  about,  I 
mean?" 

"About  Russia,  against  Kerensky  and  Capitalism 
and  for  the  proletariat.  He  wasn't  against  war.  He 
wanted  to  go  himself  and  be  an  officer.  So  as  to  learn, 
you  know.  And  to  keep  the  war  from  turning  into  a 
Capitalists'  instrument.  But  on  account  of  his  heart 
he  couldn't.  That's  what  makes  me  so  anxious.  He 
could  n't  stand  being  beaten  up  by  the  police  the  way 
Andre  Fredova  can  — " 

"But,  my  dear  child,  you  don't  for  a  moment  imagine 
that  political  prisoners  — " 

The  triangular  chin  stiffened,  the  mouth  stretched  in 
a  hard  line  of  caution  and  mystery. 

"Oh,  Miss  Schuyler,  you  haven't  been  one  of  the 
proletariat." 

Poor  child,  Neith  thought,  there  were  centuries  of 
oppression  and  an ti- Jewish  persecution  in  her  blood; 
no  wonder  she  imagined  horrors.  She  exerted  herself  to 


NO.  26  JAYNE  STREET 

keep  Sadie  talking  about  her  family  and  her  life  on  the 
East  §ide. 

"The  old  folks  on  my  mother's  side  are  straight  Jew 
ish.  They  keep  the  door  open  and  the  candle  burning  at 
Passover  for  the  prophet  Elias.  I  guess  that's  where  we 
get  it,  always  looking  for  something  better  that 's  com 
ing.  Only  I  tell  my  mother  I  don't  want  no  more  proph 
ets,  what  I  want  is  something  doing  —  right  now! 

"My  father  was  Irish,  he  was  killed  when  I  was  a  kid. 
In  a  street-car  strike.  My  mother  is  married  to  a  straight 
Russian  now.  I  guess  he  beats  her  up  some  when  he's 
been  drinking,  but  she  likes  him  a  lot.  My  mother  goes 
to  synagogue  sometimes.  But  she  brought  me  up  liberal. 
She  says  she  don't  see  any  good  knocking  Jesus  Christ 
all  the  time.  She  says  it 's  ignorant  ..." 

"He  was  a  great  Jew,"  Neith  reminded  her. 

"Well,  that's  what  Hippolyte  says  the  Jews  are  for, 
to  introduce  Christianity  .  .  .  Do  you  think  they  will 
let  me  see  him  the  first  thing  in  the  morning,  Miss 
Schuyler?" 

About  half -past  nine  Adam  Frear's  lawyer  came  in, 
a  tall,  gray  man  with  a  kindly  voice.  Free,  Neith  was 
pleased  to  find,  of  any  disposition  to  make  heroics  of  the 
situation. 

He  had  seen  Hippolyte  and  found  him  in  good  cour 
age.  Yes,  the  Free  Speech  League  would  certainly  take 
up  the  case.  It  was  the  sort  of  thing  that  was  exactly  in 
their  line.  He  had  secured  one  of  the  circulars  and  did 
not  find  it  seditious.  Sadie  must  commit  the  case  for- 


NO.  26  JAYNE  STREET 

mally  into  their  hands.  The  young  Jewish  lawyer  she 
had  sent  in  that  day  did  n't  help  matters.  He  had  been 
too  much  disposed  toward  the  poses  of  martyrdom. 
Hippolyte  had  sent  his  love. 

"Was  he  well?  Was  his  heart  bothering  him?" 

"He  was  lying  down,  resting,"  the  lawyer  told  her. 
Sadie  must  rest  herself  to  be  ready  for  what  was  before 
her. 

"Will  they  let  me  in?  Even  if  I'm  not  married  to 
him?" 

"If  there's  any  objection  on  that  score,  we'll  get 
you  married  to  him."  She  rested  more  contented  with 
that. 

Out  on  the  landing  the  gray  man  offered  to  notify 
both  the  young  people's  families.  He  could  find  them 
through  the  young  Jewish  lawyer,  whom  he  had  already 
seen. 

"They've  beaten  him  up  considerably,"  he  admitted 
with  a  quiet  matter-of-factness  that  was  more  terrible 
than  indignation.  "I  could  n't  get  all  the  particulars;  he 
was  looking  pretty  sick,  and  I  did  n't  want  to  excite  him. 
But  they  '11  let  him  alone  now  that  they  know  the 
League  is  taking  up  the  case.  I  wish  Frear  were  here." 

"So  do  I.  But  .  .  .  Mr.  Sydnor,  I  ...  my  family  is 
not  entirely  without  influence.  If  there  is  anything  I  can 
do.  My  cousin,  Mr.  Bruce  Havens  — " 

"Oh,  it  would  n't  interest  him." 

"If  there  is  money  needed — "  He  thanked  her  for 
that,  said  that  there  might  be  for  the  families  of  the 


NO.  26  JAYNE  STREET 

other  men,  and  went  away.  Neith  started  to  call  Bruce 
on  the  telephone,  and  thought  better  of  it.  Sydnor 
would  n't  have  been  so  sure  of  Bruce's  lack  of  interest 
if  he  had  n't  had  experience  with  Bruce's  kind. 

She  went  back  to  make  Sadie  comfortable  for  the 
night,  careful  to  keep  out  of  her  face  and  voice  the  least 
suspicion  of  anxiety.  Sadie  had  put  all  her  own  anxiety 
on  the  lawyer's  shoulders,  with  the  pathetic  belief  of  the 
poor  that  to  the  class  just  above  them,  all  things  are 
possible. 

"You  do  think  he'll  get  me  in,  don't  you?  But  it 
would  be  too  bad  if  we  had  to  get  married,  now.  Me  the 
way  I  am.  They'd  think  I  was  forcing  him.  Of  course 
Hippolyte  would  be  willing  if  he  thought  I  wanted  it.  I 
did  once,  just  a  little.  I  thought  it  might  be  easier  for  the 
baby.  But  Hippolyte  wanted  his  son  to  be  a  child  of 
Liberty.  Hippolyte 's  wonderful!  Don't  you  think  so, 
Miss  Schuyler?" 

"You  poor  child,  yes!" 

"I  wish  I  had  said  he  was  my  husband.  I  would  n't 
care  the  least  bit  about  lying  to  the  police.  Do  you  sup 
pose  I  could  do  it  now?" 

"It  would  n't  be  exactly  a  lie,  I  think,  and  no  doubt 
it  can  be  managed.  There 'd  probably  be  another  officer 
in  charge.  You  must  rest  to  be  ready  for  it."  Between 
relief  and  fatigue,  Sadie  dropped  away  almost  instantly 
into  even-breathing  sleep. 

Neith  herself  lay  a  long  time  staring  into  the  dark. 
She  felt  herself  drawn  into  strange  and  incredible  situa- 


NO.  26  JAYNE  STREET  227 

tions,  and  the  strangest  thing  was  that  she  did  not  feel 
more  strange  in  them. 

She  was  just  at  that  halfway  house  between  the  old 
life  and  the  new  where  she  was  able  to  have  the  clearest 
appreciation  of  the  point  of  view  of  both  of  them.  She 
knew  exactly  how  the  Aunts  and  Millicent  would  feel 
about  her  harboring  the  unmarried  mate  of  an  Anarch 
ist  who  was  in  jail  for  sedition.  She  had  all  of  a  Van 
Droom-Schuyler's  dread  of  the  police  and  publicity,  and 
yet  she  knew  very  well  that  she  meant  to  go  to  jail  and 
to  court  with  little  Sadie  Leninsky,  and  to  use  in  Hip- 
polyte's  interest,  whatever  remained  to  her  of  the  Van 
Droom-Schuyler  prestige.  She  could  sound  in  imagina 
tion  the  cold  depths  of  obliquity  into  which  Aunt  Dore- 
mas  would  drop  her,  and  with  genuine  surprise  she  took 
the  measure  of  her  own  insensibility  to  anything  such 
obliquity  implied. 

She  thought  of  Adam  Frear  and  was  immeasurably 
drawn  to  him.  She  wanted  him  then  and  there,  his  head 
on  her  pillow,  his  voice  in  her  ear.  She  would  want  him, 
she  knew,  to-morrow;  she  would  feel  the  lack  of  him  like 
the  lack  of  a  hand  or  an  arm  in  the  business  of  seeing 
Hippolyte  out  of  jail.  For  now  at  last  she  had  the  mate 
rial  for  a  picture  of  their  life  together.  They  would  do 
things  like  this  together;  he  with  his  knowledge  of  the 
mechanism  of  society,  and  she  with  the  personal  touch 
of  understanding. 

She  thought  of  that  portion  of  her  father's  estate  that 
he  had  never  realized  because  it  had  been  made  condi- 


228  NO.  26  JAYNE  STREET 

tional  on  his  recantation  of  certain  youthful  enthusi 
asms.  She  remembered  that  she,  as  his  heir,  was  under 
no  such  conditions  and  decided  to  speak  to  her  trustee 
about  it.  Her  father,  she  knew,  would  approve  of  the  use 
she  and  Adam  Frear  could  make  of  the  money. 

All  these  ideas  were  clear-cut  and  immediate.  But 
by  degrees  all  her  thoughts  merged  into  a  great  tender 
ness  for  Adam  Frear  and  a  great  longing  for  his  pres 
ence,  which  between  waking  and  dozing  seemed  to 
merge  into  the  thoughts  of  Sadie  Leninsky;  Hippolyte 
.  .  .  Adam  in  prison  .  .  .  herself  and  Adam's  child  .  .  . 
Suddenly  out  of  her  half -dreaming  state  flashed  that 
spirit-child  that  used  to  run  beside  her  in  the  Boboli 
Gardens  .  .  .  the  child  with  soft  dark  hair  and  blue, 
sparkling  eyes  .  .  .  Adam's  eyes!  She  had  never  thought 
of  it  before.  She  sat  up  in  bed  realizing  something  of 
what  was  in  the  hearts  of  those  two  pathetic  young 
people  when  they  renounced  the  formality  of  marriage 
for  themselves.  How  trivial  all  that  seemed  before  the 
mighty  forces  that  draw  the  lover  and  the  maid!  She 
blushed  a  little  for  having  thought  well  of  herself  for 
being  kind  to  Sadie. 

Toward  morning  she  woke  again  with  a  sense  of 
something  having  happened,  something  amputating 
and  irrevocable.  There  was,  she  suspected,  a  touch  of 
nightmare  about  it,  a  faint,  irreducible  tinge  of  horror. 
Adam  seemed  far  away,  and  for  the  first  time  she 
thought  of  all  the  accidents  of  war  that  might  happen 
to  a  war  correspondent.  Obeying  an  obscure  impulse 


NO.  26  JAYNE  STREET  229 

she  got  up  and  lit  her  lamp  to  go  and  read  that  little  slip 
of  his  she  had  pasted  on  the  lid  of  her  desk  months  ago 
after  that  trip  to  Marcy.  While  she  fumbled  with  it,  she 
heard  Sadie  calling  her,  and  a  hand  at  her  door.  Neith 
had  left  all  the  doors  unlocked  between  the  rooms,  in 
case  of  emergency.  Sadie  was  coming  to  find  her,  trailing 
Neith's  long  dressing-gown,  ghostly  white  in  the  dim 
light. 

"Miss  Schuyler,  Miss  Schuyler  .  .  .  where  are  you? 
You  must  come  with  me.  Hippolyte  has  called  me  ... 
just  now!  I  heard  him  as  plain  as  plain.  I  am  sure  he 
wants  me  ..." 

"Come  with  me,  into  my  room,  Sadie.  It  is  only  a 
dream." 

"Sure,  Miss  Schuyler.  I  heard  him  as  plain  as  plain. 
Like  he  calls  me  sometimes  in  the  night  when  he  is  sick. 
Sure,  something  is  the  matter."  She  was  shaking  all  over 
with  dreadful  certainty. 

Neith  got  the  girl  into  bed  and  lay  down  beside  her. 
"This  isn't  Russia,"  she  insisted;  "there  are  doctors 
attached  to  all  the  jails.  If  Hippolyte  were  sick  he  would 
be  attended  to."  But  she  wished  she  had  asked  the  law 
yer  for  more  particulars.  Just  exactly  what  did  it  mean 
to  be  "beaten  up"  by  the  police.  Anyway,  they  had  the 
lawyer's  address  at  the  jail,  she  insisted,  and  any  news 
would  be  instantly  transmitted. 

They  fell  both  of  them  into  a  heavy  slumber  at  last, 
but  when  Neith  came  into  Sadie's  room  about  eight 
with  her  breakfast  on  a  tray,  she  found  the  girl  sitting 


230  NO.  26  JAYNE  STREET 

up  staring  across  the  counterpane  in  a  dreadful,  stony 
blankness. 

"Hippolyte  's  dead,"  she  announced. 

"You  can't  have  heard.  It's  bad  for  you  to  imagine 
things." 

"He's  dead.  I  know  he  is."  She  ate,  however,  me 
chanically,  as  long  as  Neith  told  her  to,  and  left  off,  like 
a  child.  While  Neith  was  describing  how  they  would  get 
a  taxi  and  go  for  the  lawyer  as  soon  as  he  had  break 
fasted,  they  heard  the  telephone  tinkling  faintly  in  the 
dining-room. 

"He's  dead,  you'll  see,"  Sadie  insisted.  She  must 
have  caught  Neith's  involuntary  dismayed  exclamation 
at  the  lawyer's  message,  for  before  Neith  had  finished, 
she  could  hear  the  girl  sobbing  wildly  and  calling  on  her 
dead  lover's  name. 

§46 

It  was  a  long  time  before  Neith  was  possessed  of  all 
the  particulars  of  the  young  Anarchist's  death,  not,  in 
deed,  until  months  later  at  the  trial  of  his  associates 
when  they  were  given  to  an  unregardful  public. 

The  death  itself  had  come  suddenly  in  fact,  without 
any  crying  out,  but  there  must  have  come  some  inner 
warning,  for  they  found  a  half -written  note: 

DEAR  FRIENDS  AND  COMRADES, 

I  write  you  this  to  encourage  you  in  the  good  work.  We  did 
not  intend  that  things  should  be  like  this,  but  even  if  I  had 
known  it  would  not  have  made  any  difference.  If  this  is  the 
only  way  — 


NO.  26  JAYNE  STREET 

They  kept  Sadie  from  seeing  him  until  he  lay  in  a 
poor  kind  of  state,  lapped  around  with  intimations  of  a 
faith  that,  once  entertained,  somehow  never  quite  fades 
out  of  the  texture  of  a  racial  life.  For  Sadie's  sake  the 
bruises  on  his  cheek  and  forehead  had  been  painted  out, 
but  as  they  stood  beside  him,  the  lawyer  lifted  a  corner 
of  the  dead  lip  to  show  two  teeth  newly  missing. 

"They  killed  him,"  he  said,  "as  surely  as  if  they  had 
meant  just  that." 

"Oh,"  cried  Neith,  "say  'we'!  Surely  we  are  as  much 
to  blame  as  anybody." 

Sydnor  had  already  told  her  as  much  as  he  knew  of 
the  peasant  bruteness  lurking  under  all  our  law  and  or 
der,  sleeked  over  by  prosperity  until  we  are  scarcely 
aware  of  it,  kin  to  the  horrors  we  had  set  out  so  high 
handedly  to  correct  abroad.  One  by  one  the  young  men 
had  been  taken  into  a  room  by  the  police,  from  which 
dull  sounds  of  anguish  issued  and  presently  a  bruised 
and  bleeding  prisoner  had  staggered  to  his  cell. 

"The  others  stood  it  better  than  Hippolyte,"  Sydnor 
told  her.  "And  all  the  time  he  had  his  exemption  papers 
in  his  pocket  stating  that  he  was  unfit  for  service  on 
account  of  a  bad  heart." 

Neith  marveled  at  the  lawyer's  impersonality,  his 
want  of  wrath.  "Surely,  if  we  went  to  the  papers  with 
this,  if  we  saw  the  Mayor,  the  Chief  of  Police!" 

He  shook  his  head.  "That's  been  tried.  They  aren't 
making  a  fuss  about  it."  He  meant  the  family  of  the 
young  garment-cutter  who  came  about  his  bier  with 


232  NO.  26  JAYNE  STREET 

grief  and  a  strange  kind  of  exultation,  a  little  hot,  white, 
licking  flame  of  pride. 

"It  was  like  that  in  France,"  she  said  as  she  waited 
for  Sadie,  sitting  in  the  cab  outside  with  Sydnor  leaning 
against  it  from  the  curb.  "Among  the  poor,  in  the  little 
villages,  when  their  dead  began  to  come  home  to  them." 

"It  is  like  that,"  Sydnor  told  her.  "It's  war  to  them. 
Hippolyte's  people  weren't  altogether  in  sympathy 
with  him.  They'd  strained  themselves  to  give  him 
advantages  and  they  didn't  like  his  being  so  anti- 
orthodox." 

"I  know;  Sadie  told  me.  How  all  of  them,  even  to 
cousins  twice  removed,  stinted  themselves  to  give  him 
two  years  at  college.  How  they  squeezed  it  out  of  them 
selves,  a  dollar  or  two  at  a  time." 

"Hundreds  of  East  Side  families  are  doing  that.  The 
bright  one,  the  one  who  by  any  chance  might  become  a 
doctor  or  a  lawyer.  They  take  a  stake  in  him.  For  the 
honor  of  their  race,  for  the  future.  The  City  College  is 
eighty  per  cent  young  Jews  from  the  East  Side,"  Sydnor 
told  her. 

Neith  supposed  this  might  be  the  secret  spring  of  the 
pride  that  made  itself  felt  in  the  manners,  too  eager  and 
ingratiating,  of  the  young  men.  She  was  surprised,  day's 
workers  as  she  knew  them  to  be,  that  so  many  of  them 
spared  this  funeral  hour.  They  circled  in  and  out  of  the 
dark  room  with  its  stale  human  smell,  and  disappeared 
in  the  crowded,  fetid  street;  plump  young  men,  pasty- 
looking,  but  with  dark  fires  in  their  eyes.  No,  not  fires, 


NO.  26  JAYNE  STREET  233 

but  the  notice  of  fires  about  to  rise.  She  felt  herself  and 
her  kind  overtaken;  she  was  strangely  afraid. 

"You  said  that  his  people  weren't  altogether  sym 
pathetic."  She  turned  back  to  Sydnor,  "It  does  n't  seem 
so  to-day." 

"Ah,  he's  come  back  to  them.  The  victim  of  persecu 
tion.  It's  their  great  common  inheritance,  more  common 
than  opinion  or  their  faith." 

If  this  were  the  case,  there  was  a  sharp  division,  then, 
between  the  elders  and  the  youngers.  It  was  when  they 
brought  the  body  down  that  the  young  men  disap 
peared  into  the  full  life  of  the  street,  children  playing, 
men  trading,  women  ensconced  domestically  on  the 
sidewalk,  peeling  potatoes  for  the  midday  meal,  nursing 
their  young. 

It  was  the  elders  only  who  followed  the  body,  with  the 
shabby  emblems  of  an  elder  faith.  They  mingled  with 
the  street,  threaded  its  resurgent  activities,  making  a 
scant  way  for  their  dead. 

It  was  only  when  they  brought  Sadie  to  her,  for  it 
was  arranged  that  that  was  the  last  Sadie  was  to  see  of 
her  young  lover,  passing  inertly  through  the  life  he  had 
not  been  able  to  deliver  one  whit  from  its  poverty  or 
its  superstition,  that  Neith  had  her  own  flash  of  the 
common  vision  of  Liberation  from  a  racial  heritage  as  it 
looked  out  of  the  work-paled  faces,  from  the  ambush  of 
long  beards  combed  by  bent,  nervous  fingers,  patient, 
exalted. 


234  NO.  26  JAYNE  STREET 

§47 

Sadie  made  very  little  trouble  about  remaining  with 
Miss  Schuyler.  It  was  out  of  the  question  that  she 
should  go  back  to  work,  and  her  mother  had  no  place  for 
her.  She  had  wanted  at  first  to  go  back  to  the  two  rooms 
where  she  had  been  happy  with  Hippolyte,  but  a  wis 
dom  beyond  her  experience  came  to  Neith. 

"If  you  had  n't  the  baby  to  think  of,  you  might.  But 
it  would  n't  be  good  for  you  now.  Hippolyte  would  n't 
be  there  now,  anyway.  He'd  be  with  us.  'Friends  and 
Comrades.'  You  remember.  You  can  be  a  help  to  me, 
managing  the  house.  I  'm  so  tired  of  restaurants,  and  it 
is  so  hard  to  get  maids.  Besides,  I'm  going  to  marry 
Adam  Frear.  There 's  so  much  I  have  to  learn,  about  his 
work,  so  much  you  can  teach  me." 

It  was  strange  to  Neith  to  find  herself  so  islanded  with 
the  little  shirt-waist  finisher.  The  Aunts  were  in  the 
country.  She  had  tried  once  to  tell  the  Havens  of  the 
Leninsky  affair.  They  had  frankly  disbelieved  her.  Too 
much  importance  must  not  be  attached  to  the  state 
ments  of  men  like  Leninsky  and  Schwartz.  Of  course, 
they  would  make  out  a  case  against  the  existing  order. 
In  any  case,  they  were  certainly  seditious,  kicking  over 
the  apple  cart  in  the  hope  of  picking  up  a  share  of  the 
plunder. 

"What  beats  me,"  said  Bruce,  "is  why,  if  these  for 
eigners  are  n't  satisfied  with  America,  they  keep  on 
coming  here." 


NO.  26  JAYNE  STREET  235 

"Oh,"  said  Neith,  stung  at  last,  "when  I  think  of 
what  America  professes  to  be,  I  think  we  are  the  for 
eigners." 

This  sort  of  thing  could  only  be  received  in  cold  po 
liteness. 

As  it  turned  out,  Neith  did  not  go  down  to  Stamford 
at  all  that  summer.  Eustace  lingered  on  at  Washington 
and  then  suddenly,  with  no  opportunity  for  good-bye, 
was  spirited  away  to  France.  Mrs.  Rittenhouse  wrote 
to  renew  the  invitation,  and  Neith,  after  brief  evasions, 
compromised  by  sending  Sadie  down  for  a  week.  She 
wrote  regularly  and  friendlily  to  Eustace  and  prayed 
every  night  for  Adam  Frear. 

Sadie,  in  spite  of  the  most  delicate  kindness,  did  not 
thrive  at  Stamford.  Away  from  the  sense  of  conflict  and 
of  immediate  touch  with  her  husband's  interests,  the 
courage  that  sustained  her  gave  way  to  common  human 
sorrow.  She  took  to  long  sessions  of  tears,  and  to  sitting 
quietly  with  her  hands  rigid  with  grief,  staring  intently 
before  her.  By  the  end  of  a  week  or  ten  days  it  was  nec 
essary  to  put  her  in  a  hospital  where  only  by  the  greatest 
care  she  could  be  saved  from  losing  the  new  life  that 
might  bring  her  peace  and  sanity. 

It  was  just  as  she  had  accomplished  this  that  Neith 
had  word  from  Adam  Frear  that  he  had  arrived  in  Bos 
ton.  She  had  a  long  night  letter  from  him  there,  and  the 
next  day  his  voice  at  the  telephone.  Anybody  might 
have  overheard  his  greeting,  but  some  spark  of  mutual 
consenting,  some  nuance  of  recognition  passed  between 


£36  NO.  26  JAYNE  STREET 

them  even  then.  He  came  into  the  house  at  Jayne  Street 
at  the  dim  end  of  the  afternoon,  when  their  faces  were 
white  and  almost  featureless  in  the  unlit  room.  There 
were  some  formalities  of  greeting,  the  beginning  of  a 
handshake.  Suddenly  his  arms  were  about  her. 

"Tell  me,  are  you  mine?" 

"Yes,  oh,  yes!"  There  was  swift,  warm  yielding  and  a 
long  interval  of  peace  and  rapture. 

XVI 

§48 

IN  the  weeks  that  followed  the  consummation  of  her 
engagement  to  Adam  Frear,  there  occurred  to  Neith  a 
singular  recrudescence  of  all  the  lovely  and  endearing 
items  of  her  past.  The  fine  gleams  of  architecture,  the 
subdued  polish  of  old  marbles,  the  rich  texture  of  can 
vases;  all  these  things  moved  and  melted  indistinguish- 
ably  into  the  hours  she  spent  with  him  —  hours  that 
more  and  more  made  her  own  nature  the  fit  and  un- 
staining  accompaniment  of  his.  He  was  the  song  and  she 
the  following  instrument. 

The  war,  with  all  its  strains  and  hesitations  which 
had  led  up  to  these  hours  and  made  them  possible,  was 
far  from  her.  It  had  become,  indeed,  the  noisy  and 
perilous  street  by  which  she  had  traveled  to  that  safe 
haven  of  his  affections,  whose  faint  reverberations  served 
but  to  accentuate  the  sense  of  her  escape.  She  saw  him 
weary  and  urgent  on  affairs  of  international  import;  she 


NO.  26  JAYNE  STREET  237 

heard  his  voice  expounding  the  war  under  the  war  that 
was  waged  in  the  Balkans  and  along  the  Russian  fron 
tier.  But  her  inner  eye  was  fixed  on  long  Italian  vistas, 
deep  ^Egean  blues,  and  the  white  crest  of  ruined  porti 
coes  foaming  up  beyond  them  on  a  fawn-colored  shore. 
Beyond  the  prosceniums  of  platforms  where  he  talked 
she  saw  the  aisle  of  pointed  cypresses  and  the  jade  pools 
of  the  Villa  d'Este;  what  she  heard  in  her  soul  was  the 
incomparable  swing  and  fall  of  Dante's  verse.  It  was, 
as  she  so  charmingly  said  to  him,  as  if  she  had  been  view 
ing  the  beauty  and  preciousness  of  the  past  through  the 
plate  glass  of  the  world's  show  window,  and  had  now, 
by  the  very  act  of  his  possession  of  her,  been  admitted 
to  the  inside.  At  which  he  had  indulgently  smiled  and 
intimated  that,  though  he  did  not  in  the  least  under 
stand  her,  he  found  her  on  all  occasions  equally  de 
lightful. 

He  was,  in  fact,  very  tired  with  the  hard  conditions  of 
European  travel,  bad  food,  and  the  continuous  drain 
upon  his  sympathies  of  unrelievable  human  misery.  He 
had  his  notes  to  work  up  for  the  magazine,  and  his  con 
clusions  to  apply  to  the  immediate  procession  of  events 
in  America.  So  it  had  been  tacitly  agreed  between  them 
that  their  marriage  should  be  delayed  until  he  could 
clear  himself  a  little  from  these  matters.  Though  she 
could  never  recall  by  whose  suggestion,  it  was  under 
stood  that  the  engagement  should  remain  unannounced 
even  among  their  intimates.  There  was,  indeed,  a  con 
scious  shrinking  on  Neith's  part  from  the  necessity  of 


238  NO.  26  JAYNE  STREET 

justifying  her  engagement,  as  she  would  have  to  do,  to 
the  Van  Droom-Schuyler  connection.  At  least  while  it 
was  in  its  first  fresh  wonder. 

Madelon,  to  whom  she  would  have  been  first  to  speak, 
was  away  trying  out  the  winter's  play  in  Toronto.  Lu- 
tra  Dunham,  whose  almost  vulgarly  hearty  devotion 
to  Direck  would  have  missed  the  more  delicate  shades 
of  Neith's  reticence,  was  fortunately  in  Seattle  with  her 
husband  settling  a  shipyard  strike.  And  it  would  have 
been  impossible  to  speak  of  her  happiness  to  poor  little 
Sadie  Leninsky,  twisting  her  hands  above  the  coverlet 
in  the  hospital.  For  the  moment  Sadie  had  no  use  for 
Adam  Frear  except  as  he  could  give  her  the  assurance 
of  the  continued  progress  of  that  struggle  for  a  vague 
and  unmeasured  "freedom"  for  which  her  young  lover 
had  lost  his  life.  It  was,  indeed,  as  if  that  life  and  that 
struggle  had  become  so  identified  for  her  that  she  could 
still  think  of  the  life  going  on  so  long  as  the  struggle  did. 
It  was  only  in  moments  of  feeling  its  check  that  she 
stood  upon  the  brink  of  recognizing  her  irreparable  loss. 
Under  the  stimulus  of  Adam  Frear 's  account  of  what 
was  going  on  under  the  surface  of  European  events, 
her  eager  and  slightly  disordered  imagination  almost 
succeeded  in  placing  Hippolyte  there,  in  a  situation  so 
much  nearer  and  more  imaginable  than  any  set  of  con 
ditions  which  her  scrapped  and  broken  religious  beliefs 
provided  for  her. 

It  was  at  such  times  when  with  all  he  had  to  do  Adam 
would  find  time  to  sit  by  the  little  shirt-waist  finisher's 


NO.  26  JAYNE  STREET  239 

bed,  Neith  came  nearer  the  quiet  fact  of  what  marriage 
with  Frear  would  mean  to  her.  It  was  at  such  times, 
too,  that  she  suffered  her  only  misgivings. 

For  Neith  had  felt  it  necessary  to  explain  herself  about 
Sadie. 

She  had  been  struck  —  on  the  occasion  of  their  first 
visit  to  the  hospital,  which  had  been  almost  as  soon  as 
she  had  found  time  to  tell  Adam  of  the  circumstance 
of  the  girl's  being  there  —  with  the  gap  of  conven 
tion  which  had  widened  between  the  situation  in  which 
she  actually  found  herself  and  what  would  have  been 
thought  possible  to  a  newly  engaged  scion  of  the  Van 
Droom-Schuylers.  It  would  have  been  incredible  to 
Great-Aunt  Rebecka  Doremas  that  any  young  person 
honored  by  that  connection,  should  have  paid  a  visit  to 
the  hospital  in  company  with  her  fiance,  to  the  unmar 
ried  relict  of  an  Anarchist,  even  then  in  the  last  stages 
of  a  condition  never  described  by  a  more  compromising 
word  than  "delicate."  Unless,  indeed,  in  moments  of  for 
getful  indignation  it  might  have  been  characterized  as 
"shameless." 

§49 

Neith  had  her  own  reserves.  Sadie  had  got  hold  some 
how,  by  a  dreadful  kind  of  clairvoyance,  the  heritage 
of  pogroms  and  oppressions,  of  the  details  of  that  last, 
unbelievable,  and  on  the  part  of  the  constituted  authori 
ties  so  insolently  indulged  in,  hour  of  torture.  At  the 
time  when  it  was  worst  for  her  it  seemed  she  would 


240  NO.  26  JAYNE  STREET 

never  be  able  to  wrench  her  mind  free  from  its  passing 
horror.  She  would  sleep  uneasily.  Then  through  the  torn 
veil  of  slumber  she  would  hear  the  accustomed  hospital 
noises,  the  muffled  groan  of  returning  consciousness 
from  the  accident  ward,  the  thud  of  a  stretcher  on  the 
floor,  distorted  into  the  thump  of  a  night  stick  on  soft 
flesh,  the  scream  of  young  terror  and  surprise.  Then  her 
own  slender  and  anguished  cry  would  ring  shrilly  down 
the  corridors.  "They're  beating  him!  They're  beating 
him  .  .  .!"  And  the  night  nurse  would  come  running 
with  the  poor  relief  of  opiates  and  professional  assur 
ance.  It  was  then  that  Neith,  in  a  last  expedient  of  an 
guished  sympathy,  bought  and  slipped  on  the  unheed 
ing  finger  a  plain  gold  band.  The  first  sight  of  the  gold 
band  on  her  twisting  fingers  had  arrested  the  poor  girl's 
attention.  It  distracted  her  for  a  moment  to  renewed 
awareness  of  herself  and  her  reason  for  being  where  she 
was,  so  that  it  became  a  point  to  which  the  attendant 
recalled  her  to  the  need  of  control  and  quietness.  She 
never  asked  how  the  ring  had  come  there.  Neith  thought, 
perhaps,  she  had  forgotten  that  she  had  not  always 
had  it.  She  would  lie  nursing  it  under  her  cheek,  and 
feel  herself  once  more  included  by  it  in  the  common 
round  of  living. 

There  was  an  odd  reluctance  on  Neith's  part  to  men 
tion  the  incident  of  the  ring  to  Adam  Frear.  It  was 
somehow  important  to  her  never  to  be  obliged  to  explain 
that  she  had  meant  him  to  see  —  for  he  must  have  seen 
Sadie  cuddling  it  on  her  pillow  —  how  completely  she 


NO.  26  JAYNE  STREET  241 

meant  to  include  Sadie's  affair  in  the  quality  of  their 
own  relation.  She  had  never  discussed  marriage  as  an 
impersonal  subject  of  social  interest  with  Adam.  She  did 
not  know  if  he  had  any  views  about  it  other  than  the 
usual  and  traditional.  Since  he  had  never  mentioned 
them,  it  was  more  than  likely  that  he  had  not.  She  had 
been  more  than  once  surprised  to  find  him  quite  con 
ventional  on  those  points  which  did  not  touch  his  im 
mediate  social  interests.  As  though  he  had  never  taken 
the  time,  or  found  it  important  to  be  anything  else. 

Little  knowledges  of  him  like  this  came  to  her  out  of 
their  enlarged  intercourse,  for  they  saw  one  another 
almost  daily.  She  understood  that  the  very  absence  of 
the  personal  point  of  view,  those  tossings  to  and  fro 
of  decisions  which  made  up  the  personal  atmosphere  of 
his  circle,  only  increased  the  sense  he  had  of  her  value 
to  him.  It  was  a  sense  which  needed  all  the  more  to  be 
satisfied,  since  she  felt,  on  the  major  issues  of  his  life,  a 
deep  and  sincere  humility. 

He  knew  so  much,  was  competent  so  largely,  that 
without  this  occasional  realization  of  the  thinness  of  his 
life  in  the  points  at  which  hers  had  been  most  enriched, 
she  would  have  been  a  little  less  perfectly  happy  in  the 
fulfillment  of  her  engagement.  The  certainty  that  she 
could  bring  the  treasure  of  that  past  to  hang  about  the 
walls  of  his  life  as  a  rich  and  appropriate  embellishment, 
gave  her  a  deep  and  simple  satisfaction.  But  she  wished 
also  to  have  him  know  her  as  the  inheritor  of  all  the  fine 
and  enduring  things  that  had  been  felt  about  marriage. 


242  NO.  26  JAYNE  STREET 

All  the  more  since  he  had  made  her  feel,  with  the  effect 
of  its  having  flashed  for  the  first  time  on  the  screen  of 
human  experience,  the  justifying  quality  of  personal 
passion. 

The  more  she  was  possessed  of  the  intimate  sense  of 
mate-love  as  its  own  justification,  the  more  she  felt  it 
necessary  to  make  Adam  clearly  understand  the  ground 
for  her  exempting  Sadie  Leninsky  from  the  common  con 
vention.  In  time  she  found  her  occasion. 

§50 

Frear's  work  of  reducing  his  Russian  notes  to  maga 
zine  articles  carried  them  well  on  into  the  winter.  He 
confessed  to  great  difficulty  in  holding  his  mind  to  the 
task,  and  in  confining  it  to  those  aspects  of  the  situation 
which  his  public  could  be  persuaded  to  take.  To  Neith 
it  came  as  part  of  the  so  amazing  revelation  of  her 
country  as  a  whole,  that  there  was  a  great  deal  ordi 
narily  conceded  to  intelligent  people  abroad  which  the 
American  public  could  not  be  made  to  take  however 
skillfully  administered.  You  could  n't  just  tell  the  truth 
about  Russia  —  especially  about  Russia  —  and  let  it 
go  at  that.  You  could  tell  only  so  much  as  could 
with  apparent  consistency  be  pieced  on  to  what  was 
already  thought  about  it. 

There  was  also  a  great  deal  for  Adam  to  do  in  stem 
ming  the  madness  of  censorship  which  by  this  time 
raged  unreasonably.  In  the  great  national  venture  in 
which  the  actual  participation  of  the  population  was 


NO.  26  JAYNE  STREET  243 

numerically  so  small,  the  fever  of  patriotism  slaked  itself 
with  the  one  easy  activity  of  censoring  other  people's 
opinions.  There  were  arrests  on  every  side  and  for  the 
absurdest  of  reasons.  And  a  ferocity  in  the  quality  of 
punishment  that  was  disconcerting  in  view  of  the  repu 
tation  for  amiability  that  the  country  had  sustained 
abroad.  If  Neith  did  n't  always  see  for  herself,  in  the 
growing  severity  of  the  courts,  the  instinct  for  self- 
preservation  at  work  among  the  controlling  groups,  there 
were  always  people  among  the  groups  she  had  elected  to 
work  among,  to  point  it  out  to  her. 

In  December  the  Food  Administration  was  persuaded 
to  take  into  account  the  existence  of  wage-earning 
classes  as  classes  deserving  of  special  consideration.  But 
the  concession  came  too  late  to  claim  a  common  cause 
with  them  in  surmounting  the  difficulties  of  a  wage-earn 
ing  existence.  It  came  indeed  in  the  affronting  guise  of  a 
consideration  for,  rather  than  a  cooperation  with,  them. 
Other  concessions  which  were  obliged  to  be  made  by 
the  war  management  in  various  departments,  took  their 
place  in  the  procession  of  war  adjustments  as  advan 
tages  gained  by  one  group  against  the  other,  as  evidences, 
if  evidence  had  ever  been  wanting,  that  the  administra 
tion  of  social  forces  was  a  step  beyond  that  boasted 
faculty  for  the  administration  of  affairs  which  had  been 
the  American  trade-mark. 

The  more  Washington  failed  to  take  the  measure  of 
such  forces  the  more  they  revealed  themselves  as  the 
welter  of  great  waters  which  the  war  winds  had  ruffled 


244  NO.  26  JAYNE  STREET 

but  not  seriously  displaced.  Even  without  the  help  of 
Adam  Frear,  without  the  witness  of  the  second  phase 
of  the  Russian  Revolution,  by  the  end  of  the  winter 
Neith  felt  herself  committed  to  some  new  ordering  of 
human  relation  which  could  be  felt  rising  on  all  horizons. 

She  was  seeing  very  little  of  her  own  people.  Between 
herself  and  the  Havens  there  had  arisen  something  like 
estrangement.  It  was  not  altogether  because  Bruce  and 
Millicent  had  refused  to  see  any  extenuation  for  any 
body  who  was  so  unfortunate  as  to  get  herself  accused  of 
variants  of  opinion.  Something  was  due  to  her  renewed 
and  sustained  interest  in  Frances  Rittenhouse. 

Neith  had  gone  rather  belatedly  to  call  on  Eustace's 
mother  after  her  return  from  Stamford.  She  had  never 
made  any  direct  announcement  of  her  engagement  to 
Adam  Frear,  and  hence  of  her  permanent  removal  from 
the  field  of  Eustace  Rittenhouse's  attention.  She  had 
rather  trusted,  when  she  had  sent  Sadie  Leninsky  down 
to  Stamford,  that  the  fact  would  escape  out  of  Sadie's 
naive  and  only  half-attentive  grasp.  To  Eustace,  to 
whom  she  wrote  regularly,  Neith  had  contented  her 
self  with  recording  the  bare  fact  of  Adam's  return  and 
adding  that  she  was  very  happy.  She  gathered  from  the 
promptness  and  the  tender  generosity  of  Eustace's 
reply,  that  he  had  appreciated  at  its  full  worth  her  in 
stinct  to  lessen  his  own  pain  by  admitting  him  to  the 
rich  revelations  of  life  which  happiness  had  brought  her. 

Once  face  to  face  with  Eustace's  mother,  Neith  found 
that  the  most  had  been  made  of  her  admission,  and  the 


NO.  26  JAYNE  STREET  245 

ground  of  a  possible  embarrassment  cleared  for  her  by 
Mrs.  Rittenhouse's  simple  and  graceful  inquiry  as  to 
when  she  meant  to  be  married.  Quite  as  simply,  Neith 
found  herself  confessing  that  no  date  had  been  fixed.  As 
soon  as  Mr.  Frear's  work  admitted,  they  meant  to  get 
away  for  a  deserved  holiday  in  Florida,  perhaps,  or 
California. 

"Adam  is  so  much  of  a  public  character,"  she  ex 
plained,  "that  we  are  being  as  quiet  about  it  as  possi 
ble."  But  the  ice  once  broken,  she  talked  more  than  she 
realized  of  what  the  experience  had  meant  to  her,  and 
by  tacit  admissions  of  sympathy  found  herself  talking 
also  of  Eustace.  It  seemed  that  he  had  been  able  to  con 
vey  very  much  more  of  his  dissatisfaction  with  the  con 
dition  of  the  Aviation  Service  than  one  would  have 
thought  possible  with  the  state  of  censorship.  Much 
more  had  come  to  his  mother  by  way  of  other  mem 
bers  of  that  service  with  whom  she  faithfully  kept  in 
touch. 

Things  were  going  wrong,  and  wrong'in  just  the  direc 
tion  and  in  the  proportion  that  Eustace  had  warned 
against. 

"One  does  n't  know  what  to  think  of  Bruce.  One 
can't  at  least  accuse  him  of  working  for  private  profit." 

"Oh,  no,"  Neith  had  assured  her.  "He's  not  only 
working  for  the  conventional  dollar  a  year,  but  if  one 
takes  into  consideration  what,  with  his  talent  for  money- 
making,  he  might  have  made  out  of  war  conditions,  he's 
working  at  an  enormous  loss," 


246  NO.  26  JAYNE  STREET 

"And  one  can't  either,  in  view  of  what  he  has  accom 
plished  in  other  fields,  one  can't  think  of  him  as  incom 
petent,"  Mrs.  Rittenhouse  was  certain. 

"Well,  then,"  said  Neith,  "we  have  only  to  think  that 
the  particular  kind  of  ability  and  integrity  that  Bruce 
has,  constitutes  a  very  high  degree  of  incompetency  in 
public  service." 

"Oh,  my  dear,  you  do  go  far."  Mrs.  Rittenhouse  was 
almost  shocked,  and  recollected  herself.  "After  all  it  is 
the  kind  of  competence  we  have  always  required  of  men, 
to  make  money  for  their  own  families  as  against  all 
other  families." 

"That  is  just  the  difficulty." 

"I  have  thought,"  said  Frances  Rittenhouse,  almost 
blushing  with  temerity,  "that  the  great  mistake  women 
have  made  is  in  allowing  the  world's  work  to  be  divided 
off  the  way  it  is.  Just  assuming  it  as  right  and  natural 
that  men  should  be  engaged  in  what  we  call  Business, 
and  women,  in  the  other  side  of  life  —  Social  Better 
ment,  I  think  it  is  the  fashion  to  call  it." 

"I've  thought  things  like  that,  too." 

Neith  recalled  her  moment  of  illumination  that  morn 
ing  at  the  General's  rooms  when  she  had  seen  Frances 
defeated  by  her  own  earlier  yielding  to  what  she  had 
been  taught  to  think  her  husband  would  value  most 
in  her.  Lest  she  betray  something  of  the  personal 
origins  of  her  conclusions,  she  hastened  to  add:  "It's 
odd  that  you  should  come  to  something  of  the  same 
conclusion  with  one  of  the  most  advanced  women  in 


NO.  26  JAYNE  STREET  £47 

America,  Rose  Matlock.  I  don't  suppose  you  have  met 
her?" 

"I've  heard  her  name." 

"She  thinks  that  all  this  social  confusion  into  which 
we  have  fallen  is  due  to  our  getting  started  wrong  as  men 
and  women  together.  Above  everything  to  our  not  being 
democratic  with  one  another.  She  says  we  can't  hope  to 
have  pure  Democracy  in  politics  until  we  get  it  in  our 
fundamental  relations." 

Mrs.  Rittenhouse  had  the  air  of  considering  this  in  the 
light  of  her  own  experience;  a  faint  tinge  of  color  came 
on  her  lovely  faded  cheek.  "Oh,  my  dear,"  she  said. 
"But  it  is  very  hard  to  be  democratic  where  one  loves. 
Love  is  a  great  autocrat.  Have  n't  you  found  it  so?" 

Neith  blushed  in  her  turn.  "But,  after  all,  when  it 
deals  with  such  confirmed  democrats  as  Adam  and 
myself—" 

"Ah,  yes,  you  are  very  fortunate,  my  dear,  to  begin 
so  close  together."  Rising  as  she  saw  her  young  guest 
getting  on  her  feet  to  depart,  she  kissed  her.  "I  hope  you 
can  find  time  to  come  again,"  she  said.  "It  will  do  Eus 
tace  good  to  hear  that  everything  is  so  well  with  you." 

§51 

It  is  not  to  be  supposed  that  Neith  did  not  find  occa 
sion,  in  the  midst  of  her  happiness,  for  thinking  of  the 
other  woman  who  had  shared  Adam  Frear's  life,  and  for 
disposing  of  these  thoughts  and  of  her  own  recollections 
of  Mrs.  Frear  to  the  advantage  of  both  of  them.  It  was 


£48  NO.  26  JAYNE  STREET 

important  to  her  relations  to  Adam  that  she  should  feel 
able  to  offer  him  something  that  his  first  marriage  had 
lacked.  And  important  to  herself  that  she  should  n't 
appear  to  do  so  at  the  expense  of  the  unfortunate  lady 
who  had  been  cruelly  defrauded  from  offering  him  even 
her  own  poor  best.  She  had  been  shy  of  question  about 
the  first  Mrs.  Frear  before  she  had  felt  any  title  to  be  so 
interested.  Now  that  it  seemed  any  inquiry  must  have 
a  private  and  personal  objective,  she  was  even  shyer. 
What  she  had  heard  from  Madelon  Sherrod,  and  had 
confirmed  by  casual  comment  from  other  of  his  friends, 
was  that  the  first  Mrs.  Frear  had  been  a  pretty,  inade 
quate  creature,  who  had  receded  from  her  first  and  un 
successful  attempt  at  motherhood  into  a  fretful  invalid- 
ism,  which  had  dropped  at  last  mercifully  into  complete 
obliviousness  of  her  state.  Her  last  two  years  had  been 
spent  in  a  sanitarium  from  which,  if  she  could  offer 
Adam  none  of  the  comforts  of  marriage,  she  at  least 
made  a  minimum  appeal  upon  his  consideration  and 
time.  She  had  been  so  little  on  the  scene  of  his  public 
activities  that  few  of  the  circle  that  knew  him  best  had 
seen  her.  And  if  Neith  looked  for  traces  of  her  passage 
through  his  personal  life,  she  found  them  rather  in  the 
lack  of  things  that  Adam  ought  to  know  about  women, 
than  in  any  positive  accretion  of  his  experience. 

There  was  the  matter  of  an  engagement  ring,  which  it 
had  not  yet  occurred  to  Adam  to  offer  her.  There  were 
two  or  three  other  little  matters  which  belong  so  inher 
ently  with  a  young  woman's  idea  of  her  engagement 


NO.  26  JAYNE  STREET  249 

that  Neith  found  herself  unconsciously  placing  herself 
in  the  attitude  to  receive,  trifles  that  had  not  had  time 
to  fade  out  of  perspective  even  when  the  engagement 
was  delayed,  as  in  this  case,  until  one  was  within  a  few 
months  of  twenty-seven.  There  were  moments,  indeed, 
when  it  seemed  that  Adam  forgot  for  her  that  this  was  a 
first  engagement.  Or,  if  he  remembered  it,  it  was  only  to 
give  himself  the  exquisite  entertainment  of  watching  his 
effect  on  her  in  a  hundred  artless  graces  of  fancy  and 
affection  which  were  new  to  him,  without  at  the  same 
time  being  new  for  him. 

But  if  there  was  not  that  revelation  of  himself  in  their 
rarest  moments  which  she  had  hoped  for,  there  was  the 
least  possible  suggestion  of  his  having  already  made  it 
in  any  other  quarter.  So  that  she  was  able  happily  to  as 
sume  that  all  that  had  happened  to  him  was  a  prolonged 
suppression  of  his  best  through  lack  of  the  proper  at 
mosphere  of  warmth  and  intimacy.  It  should  be  her 
task,  she  thought,  to  bring  him  back  to  the  point  at 
which  he  should  do  his  best,  by  always  daring  to  be 
her  best  in  his  company.  One  thing  he  had  succeeded 
in  being  with  very  little  difficulty,  and  that  was,  his 
charmingest. 

One  had  to  make  allowance,  too,  for  his  engrossment 
with  the  new  principle  of  social  coherence  which  he  had 
found  breaking  through  the  confusion  of  Europe;  to  be 
felt  like  the  ground  swell  under  the  tide,  already  shap 
ing  the  direction  of  European  events.  It  was  part  of 
the  task  he  had  set  himself,  to  prepare  America  for  the 


250  NO.  26  JAYNE  STREET 

turn  of  the  tide,  and  to  prevent  the  setting-in  of  cross 
currents  in  the  Labor  movements  which  would  make 
choppy  if  not  disastrous  sailing.  Quite  enough  for  one 
man  to  do,  she  told  him,  without  the  business  of  being 
engaged.  But  he  had  found  a  way  to  convince  her  that, 
except  for  the  business  of  being  engaged  and  the  pleas 
ant  haven  it  made  him,  he  should  n't  have  been  able 
to  carry  on  the  world's  business  at  all.  For  the  present 
she  had  the  sense  to  see  that  the  not  too  absorbing  en 
joyment  of  her  effect  on  him  was  the  best  thing  she 
could  offer. 

Almost  every  day  he  would  join  her  when  the  rush  of 
the  day's  work  was  over,  early  or  later,  according  as  he 
found  himself  free  to  prolong  the  visit  into  the  evening, 
and  they  would  dine  together  at  some  one  of  those  out- 
of-the-way,  and,  from  the  culinary  point  of  view,  al 
ways  extraordinary,  places  to  dine  that  are  to  be  dis 
covered  in  New  York  in  such  numbers.  They  found 
themselves  well  suited  with  the  tumultuous  privacy  of 
a  Democracy  which  does  at  least  go  through  the  paces 
of  its  pretension  most  amazingly. 

They  dined  at  chop-houses  back  of  "The  Square" 
and  south  of  Twenty-Third  Street,  where  history  was 
made  over  baked  potatoes  and  buttermilk.  They  dined 
less  often,  but  as  entertainingly,  at  vast  uptown  cara 
vansaries  where  habituated  young  men  in  the  uniforms 
of  able  seamen  sat  opposite  equally  habituated  young 
women  in  pearls  and  sables.  They  caught,  or  at  least 
Neith  caught,  that  air  which  New  York  sustained  so  sue- 


NO.  26  JAYNE  STREET 

cessfully  during  the  first  year  of  the  war,  of  having  at 
last  an  occasion  to  which  its  modernity  was  equal.  It 
gave  to  their  detours  into  the  past,  the  beautiful  past 
of  all  engaged  couples,  a  freshness  that  more  than  made 
up  to  Neith  for  Adam's  not  taking  them  by  any  native 
instinct  or  intention. 

It  was  on  one  of  these  occasions,  when  the  exigencies 
of  Adam's  evening  had  brought  them  together  early  in 
the  afternoon,  that  they  had  stopped  at  Brentano's  for  a 
book  Adam  was  needing  on  Bessarabia.  Returning  they 
had  been  caught  by  the  choked  evening  traffic  directly 
opposite  the  show  window  of  one  of  those  repositories 
of  the  plunder  of  history  which  make  of  Fifth  Avenue 
a  paradise  of  shoppers.  Neith  had  promptly  turned  to 
feed  on  its  display  her  natural  keenness  for  intricacy 
and  color. 

"Do  you  like  those  things?"  Adam  had  questioned 
with  just  the  easy  faculty  for  being  interested  in  things 
that  interested  her  which  was  part  of  his  perfect  charm. 

"Oh,  so  much!  Not,"  she  insisted,  "for  themselves, 
though  I  think  them  beautiful.  But  for  the  intimacy  of 
hand  and  thought  which  I  think  they  show,  oh,  im 
mensely  more  than  things  which  are  made  for  a  purpose. 
For  a  useful  purpose,  I  mean."  She  was  looking  at  a 
carved  jade  necklace  and  a  collection  of  Chinese  enamels. 

"I  see,"  he  said;  "but  if  you  get  all  that  out  of  them, 
they  are  useful.  Let  us  go  in.  You  know,"  he  smiled 
humorously,  "I've  never  bought  you  anything  yet,  and 
I'm  going  away  this  evening." 


252  NO.  26  JAYNE  STREET 

"Adam!  You  never  told  me!" 

"Only  to  Washington.  The  President  has  sent  for 
me." 

He  was  holding  the  door  open  as  he  spoke,  lingering, 
and  taking  advantage  of  the  momentary  privacy  cre 
ated  by  the  dusk  of  the  half-deserted  shop,  for  the  en 
joyment  of  her  pride  and  pleasure  in  his  announcement. 
She  had  a  dozen  questions  to  ask  which  had,  neverthe 
less,  to  wait  on  the  act  of  shopping.  Once  begun,  it  had, 
it  seemed,  to  go  on  automatically  in  the  survey  of  a 
tray  full  of  necklaces  which  at  Frear's  gesture  the  at 
tentive  shopkeeper  had  laid  before  them.  They  had 
been  looking  at  necklaces  in  the  window  and  it  was  the 
first  thing  that  occurred  to  him. 

The  shopkeeper,  observing  their  absorption,  which  was 
of  a  nature  not  new  to  him,  quietly  placed  a  tray  of  rings 
and  bracelets  beside  the  necklaces  and  withdrew  osten 
sibly  to  find  something  which  might  better  suit  them. 

As  he  drew  the  second  tray  toward  him  automatically 
some  appropriate  connection  seemed  to  wake  in  Adam's 
mind,  between  the  idea  of  rings  and  the  very  delightful 
situation  in  which  they  then  found  themselves. 

"Of  course,  if  you  really  care  for  this  sort  of  thing. 
Would  n't  you  rather  have  a  diamond?"  He  had  the  air 
of  wanting  to  do  the  proper  thing,  supposing  there  was  a 
choice  of  things  to  be  done. 

"Oh,  no,  Adam,  really.  Not  diamonds.  Or  would  you 
rather  I  didn't  have  a  ring — ?"  He  looked  surprised, 
slightly.  "If  you  think  it  bourgeois  — " 


NO.  26  JAYNE  STREET  253 

"I  think  it  very  becoming,"  he  assented  to  the  three 
tiny  square-cut  emeralds  in  an  antique  setting  which 
she  had  selected. 

It  was  not  until  the  sympathetic  shopkeeper  had  re 
tired  again  to  the  gloom  of  the  shop's  interior  to  verify 
the  check  Adam  had  given  him,  that  the  moment  came 
that  she  waited  for,  the  moment  of  their  mutual  inclu 
sion  in  all  that  the  ring  stood  for  in  the  completion  of 
their  relations. 

She  had  put  it  on,  holding  her  hand  extended  for  a 
full  view  of  it  below  the  level  of  the  showcase,  in  the 
shadow  not  yet  lighted  by  the  electric  bulbs  beginning 
to  glow  in  the  farther  end  of  the  shop.  Suddenly  his 
hand  had  closed  over  hers,  close,  closer,  until  she  was 
conscious  of  little  beside  that  warm  personal  clasp  and 
the  pleasant  pain  of  the  ring  biting  into  the  flesh  of  her 
prisoned  fingers,  and  the  sudden  tremor  of  his  body  as  it 
crowded  momentarily  against  hers.  It  stayed  with  them, 
the  almost  solemn  intimation  of  finality,  as  they  came 
again  into  the  street  half  lighted  between  the  ebb  of  the 
day  and  the  first  twinkling  onset  of  the  night.  Almost 
without  speaking  he  drew,  in  defiance  of  custom,  the 
hand  that  wore  his  ring  through  his  arm  and  directed 
their  steps  toward  one  of  those  retired  and  comfortably 
exclusive  hotels  between  Fourth  and  Fifth  Avenues, 
where,  in  respect  to  his  still  having  all  his  arrangements 
for  Washington  to  make,  they  dined  early  and  with 
almost  married  formality. 

When  they  reached  Jayne  Street  an  hour  or  two  later, 


254  NO.  26  JAYNE  STREET 

he  would  not  sit  down,  but  stood  in  the  glow  of  the  fire 
she  had  rekindled  for  him,  and  the  softly  shaded  light, 
waiting  till  she  came  back  to  him  from  making  the  room 
safe  from  the  invasion  of  the  December  chill.  She  came 
back  from  the  drawn  curtain  and  the  trimmed  lamp; 
acts  so  intimate  as  to  constitute  an  extension  merely  of 
the  sense  of  superior  intimacy  which  had  begun  for  them 
in  the  incident  of  the  ring. 

"Must  you  go  so  soon,  Adam?" 

"Oh,  soon  ...  if  I  am  to  go  at  all."  The  long,  sweet 
straightness  of  their  embrace  flowed  in  her  veins  like 
water. 

"Not  again,"  he  whispered,  "no  more  parting  ..." 

"Oh,  no  more,  Adam."  His  mouth  drank  fiercely  of 
hers.  By  a  drowning  effort  she  raised  her  hand  and  laid 
the  cool  emerald  of  her  ring  against  his  cheek. 

"Soon,  Adam— " 

"As  soon  as  I  come  back  .  .  .  just  married  .  .  . 
quietly." 

"Yes.  Quietly.  We  can  live  here — " 

"Here—" 

With  a  movement  of  divine  recovery  she  freed  herself. 

"Ah,  I'll  hold  you  to  that!"  He  kissed  her  ring  rever 
ently. 

§52 

She  was  glad  then  that  she  had  taken  her  oppor 
tunity  when  it  came  for  making  him  understand  how 
she  really  felt  about  poor  Sadie.  It  had  come  very  natu- 


NO.  26  JAYNE  STREET  255 

rally  on  her  telling  him  of  the  birth  of  Sadie's  son,  and 
of  what  the  doctor  had  said  of  the  very  frailness  of  its 
hold  on  existence  constituting  the  mother's  safeguard 
against  that  wildness  of  thought  and  emotion  into  which 
the  circumstances  of  Hippolyte's  death  had  thrown 
her. 

"She  will  have  to  work  so  hard  to  save  it,"  the  doctor 
had  said,  "that  she  won't  have  time  for  thinking  of  her 


sorrow." 


.  "It  will  be  like  that  in  Europe,"  Frear  had  agreed, 
with  the  constant  recurrence  of  his  mind  to  the  larger, 
the  social  scene.  "They  will  have  to  work  so  hard  for  the 
liberties  they  win  that  the  shocks  and  losses  will  pass 
much  more  quickly  than  anybody  imagines." 

"Oh,  liberty!"  said  Neith.  "I  wonder  if  their  liberties 
won't  be  much  more  of  a  form  than  an  achievement!  I 
was  thinking  of  poor  Sadie  and  Hippolyte  and  their  at 
tempt  to  get  liberty  by  omitting  the  marriage  ceremony. 
They  didn't,  you  see,  succeed  in  omitting  anything 
else.  They  were  as  devoted  to  each  other,  and  as  bound 
by  that  devotion  as  if  they  had  been  married  in  all  the 
religions  they  were  heir  to. 

"It  was  that,"  she  added,  seeing  him  withholding  his 
response  for  a  fuller  comprehension,  "that  made  me  so 
interested  in  them  from  the  first  —  my  seeing  that  the 
same  thing  had  happened  to  them  —  something  always 
does  happen,  I  suppose,  in  a  true  marriage  —  that  had 
happened  to  my  father  and  my  mother." 

"Yes,"  he  said,  regarding  her  with  that  charming 


256  NO.  26  JAYNE  STREET 

willingness  to  be  charmed  which  led  to  one  of  those 
interruptions  of  purest  personal  content  that  make  the 
substance  of  betrothals. 

"It  is  the  thing  that  I  hope,  that  I  know,  is  going  to 
happen  to  us,"  she  continued  —  "something  that  makes 
us  belong  to  one  another  with  a  belonging  that  is  quite 
outside  the  law  and  the  ceremony.  But  it  makes  me  won 
der,  since  it  happened  to  those  two  poor  young  things, 
what  they  thought  they  were  getting  rid  of  by  not 
having  any  ceremony." 

"It  left  them  free,"  he  suggested,  "free  to  separate  in 


case  — " 


"Ah,  but  it  did  n't.  They  were  so  little  free  that  poor 
Sadie  has  nearly  died  of  the  separation.  And  her  child  is 
marked  with  it;  marked  with  the  grief  that  she  could  n't 
be  freed  from,  even  by  death." 

"Don't  you  think  that  she  ought  to  be  able  to  free 
herself?"  ' 

"Oh,  no,  Adam!  Able  to  free  herself  from  hurting  any 
body  else,  the  child,  the  rest  of  us!  But  if  love  were  a 
thing  people  could  wholly  help,  like  deciding  to  live  in 
the  town  or  the  country,  it  would  lose  half  its  value  in 
life."  She  came  suddenly  close  to  him  with  one  of  those 
swift  yieldings  of  herself  which  were  rare  enough  to  give 
him  the  most  exquisite  delight. 

"There  is  something  I  want  to  talk  to  you  about, 
Adam,"  she  said  —  "about  our  life  together,  and  what 
I  think  are  going  to  be  some  of  the  difficulties." 

"It  seemed  to  me  so  great  a  difficulty  to  get  you, 


NO.  26  JAYNE  STREET  257 

that  all  the  rest  looks  small  beside  it,"  he  tenderly  re 
plied. 

"Ah"  —  in  her  turn  she  met  him  —  "it  seemed  to 
me  that  I  fairly  melted  into  your  arms  as  soon  as  I  was 
asked."  Upon  which  she  did  for  a  moment  so  melt  that 
it  was  from  the  close  shelter  of  those  arms  that  she 
asked  again  in  wonder,  "Did  I  seem  difficult?" 

"Very  far  away,  at  least." 

"Oh,  I  was,  I  am!"  She  pushed  back  in  order  to  give 
the  greater  emphasis  to  what  she  had  to  say.  "I  am 
farther  off  from  much  that  interests  you  and  occupies 
your  attention  than  you  have  any  idea.  From  Sadie  and 
Hippolyte  even,  and  those  other  poor  young  fellows 
who  are  still  in  jail.  I  am  so  far  away  that  I  can't  see 
what  they  do  it  for.  I  can't  see  why  they  should  make  so 
terribly  much  of  their  opinions,  and  feel  that  that  is  an 
excuse  for  upsetting  the  order  of  things." 

"But  if  their  opinion  isn't  much,  it  surely  isn't 
enough  for  us  to  imprison  them  and  beat  them  to  death 
for." 

"  Certainly  not  that!  But  if  we  were  n't  so  stupid  as  to 
do  those  things  to  them,  I  would  n't  see  it  as  any  more 
than  the  opinionatedness  of  very  young  and  very  badly 
educated  young  men." 

"Yes,"  he  said,  "it's  that."  He  seemed  to  be  consid 
ering  her  possible  drift  almost  with  wariness. 

"And  I  must  admit  that  Fleeta  often  seemed  ridicu 
lous  to  me.  That  young  Hindoo  student  —  what  busi 
ness  was  it  of  his  to  embroil  the  whole  world  over  his 


258         NO.  £6  JAYNE  STREET 

idea  of  what  is  good  for  India?  What  evidence  had  he  to 
offer  that  he  really  knew?" 

"As  much,  I  should  think,  as  those  who  are  already 
deciding  the  destiny  of  India  are  offering." 

"Oh,  yes.  That  I  agree  to.  There  is  n't  any  evidence 
anywhere  that  the  sort  of  people  who  have  been  manag 
ing  things  know  anything  about  managing  them  to  the 
best  interests  of  humanity.  I  see  that.  I  see  that  with 
Bruce  and  Millicent  and  my  Aunts,  who  have  had 
everything  which  ought  to  make  them  fit,  no  sort  of  real 
fitness  has  happened.  It  is  because  I  see  that,  for  my 
own  people,  that  I  am  coming  over  to  your  side.  Only 
I  wanted  to  be  sure  that  you  understand  that  I  don't 
always  see  what  this  better  thing  is  that  you  and  your 
people  are  trying  to  put  over.  I  am  just,  in  a  much 
greater  degree  than  you  realize,  taking  your  word  for  it." 

"Well,  then,  I  shall  have  to  confess  to  you  that  I 
don't  always  know  myself,"  Frear  admitted,  "but  it 
seems  to  me  that  the  way  toward  the  better  thing  lies  in 
being  what  the  present  arrangement  is  n't,  just  and 
kind." 

"That's  Christianity,  isn't  it?" 

"Oh,  my  dear."  He  moved  away  from  her  for  a  mo 
ment  and  from  the  window  turned  half  confusedly  back. 
"I  think  you  have  found  me  out.  I  think  at  bottom  that 
Christianity  is  what  I'm  trying  to  'put  over,'  as  you 
say." 

She  did  not,  however,  rise  at  once  to  that.  "I  have  n't 
really  got  very  much  out  of  Christianity  as  a  scheme  of 


NO.  26  JAYNE  STREET  259 

life,"  she  said;  "what  I've  got  is,  I  suppose,  what  is 
called  'culture,'  which  means  absolutely  being  kind,  and 
choosing,  if  you  have  to  choose,  being  kind  to  others  at 
the  expense  of  yourself.  And  somehow  I  thought  there 
was  more  in  Christianity  than  that.  I'd  have  been 
'kind'  to  Sadie,  in  any  case,  I  hope." 

Now  she  saw  that  he  was  wary,  and  misread  it  as 
that  scrupulosity  on  behalf  of  his  own  womankind,  to 
which  she  was  accustomed  in  men  of  her  own  circle.  "But 
I  want  you  to  know,"  she  hastened  to  add,  "that  there 
was  something  more.  I  did  n't  criticize  their  not  being 
married,  because  I  saw  that  they  had  n't  left  out  any 
of  the  things  that  the  ceremony  was  meant  to  involve. 
You  don't  know  how  severe  I  can  be,  even  with  people 
who  have  had  a  ceremony,  who  play  fast  and  loose  with 
it."  She  thought  of  Julius  Sherrod,  but  she  could  not 
pay  Madelon  out  as  an  example,  and  she  reflected  that 
Frear  himself  would  n't  have  known  anything  about 
the  Rittenhouse  affair.  As  he  continued  to  listen  with 
that  slight  air  of  caution  or  confusion  with  which  men 
so  often  hear  the  modern  woman  expounding  marriage, 
she  finished  quickly. 

"It's  only  that  I  want  you  to  know  that  I  feel  some 
sort  of  reality  behind  these  things,  something  hard,  or  at 
least  something  that  has  substance."  And  on  his  still 
remaining  silent,  she  came  round  at  last.  "I  suppose 
really  that  the  whole  criterion  lies  in  what  you  said,  that 
the  reality  is  kind;  that  however  the  thing  is  done,  no 
body  should  be  hurt  by  it." 


260  NO.  26  JAYNE  STREET 

"Yes.  Yes."  He  brightened,  agreeing  eagerly.  "That's 
the  ethics  of  it.  Nobody  must  be  hurt." 

As  she  recalled  their  last  moment  together  and  the 
fulfillment  it  implied,  his  assent  had  all  the  force  of  a 
covenant. 


BOOK  IV 


XVII 

§53 

NEITH  was  sitting  in  the  blue  room,  writing  to  Eustace 
Rittenhouse  and  thinking  of  Adam  Frear.  She  had 
found  herself  greatly  in  arrears  with  her  correspondence 
and  had  begun  a  letter  to  Eustace,  not  only  with  the 
hope  of  making  it  up,  but  because,  since  there  had  never 
been  anybody  but  Eustace  to  whom  she  could  write  in 
timately  and  interestedly  of  herself,  it  was  a  way  of  mak 
ing  up  to  herself  for  the  sudden  rift  of  intimacy  with 
Adam  Frear.  He  had  been  gone  two  days,  days  in  which 
Neith  had  measured  her  dependence  on  the  daily  per 
sonal  touch  with  something  like  alarm.  Even  her  inex 
perience  recognized  that  the  need  of  him  and  his  need 
of  her  had  come  to  that  pitch  where  it  was  only  possi 
ble  to  be  assuaged  with  the  still  greater  intimacy,  the 
more  complete  possession  of  marriage.  And  yet,  with  the 
equally  pressing  claims  and  prepossessions  of  Adam's 
work,  would  marriage  do  any  more  than  to  make  of  his 
poor  dear  consciousness  the  field  for  a  still  closer  clutch 
and  struggle  between  contending  interests? 

She  remembered  that  Eustace  had  said  that  he  could 
put  his  desire  for  her  out  of  his  head,  but  he  could  n't 
put  her  aside.  She  suspected  that  this  might  be  generally 
the  case  with  men  between  their  work  and  their  wives. 
Should  she  marry  Adam,  then,  and  trust  to  her  intui- 


264  NO.  26  JAYNE  STREET 

tions  to  leave  a  clear  field  for  his  work?  Or  should  she 
with  her  own  hands  unbind  him  from  the  web  of  tender 
interest  until  a  time  when  the  more  pressing  of  his  tasks 
should  be  done? 

The  two  indecisions  ran  in  her  mind  with  the  delicate 
tremors  of  a  song,  while  all  their  implications  worked 
unconsciously  into  her  letter  to  Eustace. 

I  have  been  thinking  much  more  about  men  lately.  As 
men,  I  mean,  and  not  as  my  friends  and  relations.  And  I've 
been  seeing  some  of  the  wonder  and  romance  of  their  lives, 
something  that  men  see  in  one  another,  I  suppose,  the  basis 
of  hero-worship.  I  can  see  that  the  world  would  have  been 
a  dull  place  without  their  willingness  to  trust  themselves  to 
adventure,  to  the  unknown  and  the  uncertain.  I'm  glad  I 
never  had  any  of  that  sore  feeling  about  men  as  oppressors, 
the  Kaisers  of  women.  I  can  see  where  men  and  women  have 
got  themselves  all  wrong  with  one  another,  with  a  kind  of 
wrongness  that  can't  be  changed  too  soon  —  I  'm  a  Suffragist 
now,  did  I  tell  you?  But  it  is  n't  going  to  be  made  right  by 
making  them  more  like  one  another.  There  has  been  a  lot 
said  about  giving  women  the  vote  so  they  can  prevent  wars. 
But  I  can  also  see  that  unless  women  are  going  to  keep  on 
seeing  how  right  and  natural  it  is  for  you  to  have  adventures, 
if  only  in  science  and  in  politics,  poor  dears,  you  are  just  go 
ing  to  have  to  go  on  having  wars  to  get  a  chance  to  be  truly 
yourselves.  And  this  new  adventure  in  politics  that  every 
body  says  is  coming  after  the  war  — 

She  broke  off  here,  remembering  that  Eustace  would 
know  it  was  chiefly  from  Adam  Frear  that  she  would 
hear  that  a  new  adventure  in  politics  was  upon  them.  It 
occurred  to  her  as  not  entirely  kind  to  give  Eustace 


NO.  26  JAYNE  STREET  265 

occasion  for  thinking  of  her  and  Adam  together  without 
at  the  same  time  giving  him  an  inkling  of  how  close  to 
gether  they  were  soon  to  be.  If  she  married  Adam  in  a 
week  or  ten  days  —  and  she  was  not  sure,  if  Adam  in 
sisted  on  it,  she  had  any  right  to  refuse  —  then  by  the 
time  this  letter  reached  Eustace,  the  thing  would  have 
happened  which  made  reticencies  on  her  part  absurd. 
She  took  a  new  sheet  and  wrote  again : 

—  this  new  economic  adventure  that  everybody  who  thinks 
seriously  of  these  things,  knows  is  coming  and  in  which,  as 
Adam  Frear's  wife,  I  shall  have  a  part  so  soon  —  for  we  are 
thinking  of  being  married  as  soon  as  Adam  can  get  around 
to  it  —  this  new  adventure  of  internationalism  — 

There  was  a  ring  at  the  door. 

There  is  some  quality  in  human  intention  which 
transmutes  itself  into  the  most  trifling  acts  and  charges 
them  with  significance.  Up  to  that  moment  nothing 
could  have  been  farther  from  Neith's  mind  than  the  pos 
sibility  of  anything  intervening  between  her  and  the 
adventure  she  had  so  lightly  indicated.  But  in  the  mo 
ment  more  that  she  moved  across  two  rooms  to  respond 
to  that  ring  —  she  was  alone  in  the  house,  the  hour  was 
that  waning  end  of  the  afternoon  which  she  had  been 
accustomed  to  reserve  for  Adam  Frear  and  she  had  been 
sitting  close  to  the  window  to  make  the  most  of  the 
shallow  light  —  she  was  taken  with  the  dreadful  cer 
tainty  that  the  ring  could  bode  nothing  less  than  some 
disaster  to  Adam  or  to  their  happy  relationship. 

There  was  relief  rather  than  surprise,  then,  in  finding 


266  NO.  26  JAYNE  STREET 

her  visitor  a  woman  instead  of  the  blue-uniformed  mes 
senger  of  disaster;  a  woman  who,  though  veiled,  showed 
at  once  in  her  dress,  in  her  assured  and  easy  movement, 
some  common  ground  of  interest,  that  community  of 
association  which  is  called  "class." 

But  it  was  evident  enough  that  the  first  motion  of 
her  visitor  on  entering  in  response  to  Neith's  invitation, 
after  consulting  aloud,  and  with  the  rising  inflection  of 
doubt,  the  name  and  address  which  she  held  in  her  hand 
on  a  scrap  of  paper,  was  surprise  almost  to  the  point  of 
disconcertion.  What  she  had  expected  Neith  could  n't 
imagine.  What  she  found,  the  delicate  modeling  of  the 
furniture,  the  so  carefully  selected  evidence  of  Euro 
pean  contacts,  the  accomplished  ease  of  everything, 
threw  her  visibly  off  the  track  of  what  she  had  come  to 
say.  She  had  to  repeat  for  her  own  assurance  the  marks 
of  identity. 

"You  are  Miss  Schuyler,  then?" 

"Oh,  certainly.  Won't  you  sit  down?  Shall  I  get  a 
light?" 

"Oh,  no,  no."  She  sat  down  in  the  chair  indicated  by 
Neith  and  put  back  her  veil.  The  late  afternoon  sun, 
taking  a  saffron  tinge  from  the  fagades  of  the  buildings 
opposite,  was  still  strong  enough  for  Neith  to  observe 
the  rather  thick  whiteness  of  the  skin,  the  strong  sweep 
of  the  brows  and  chin,  and  the  sensitive,  tragic  mouth 
uncovered  by  the  instinctive  gesture  of  one  accustomed 
to  no  veils  or  indirection  between  herself  and  her  mark. 

"I  have  had  to  know  your  name,"  said  her  visitor; 


NO.  26  JAYNE  STREET  267 

"but  since  you  have  declined  my  proffer  to  commun 
icate  without  any  revelation  of  identities,  you  will 
understand  why  I  don't  immediately  tell  you  mine. 
Unless,  of  course,  you  insist  upon  it." 

"Oh,  no.  Not  unless  you  wish  it." 

Even  as  she  said  it  Neith  thought  to  herself  that 
in  a  moment  she  would  know  .  .  .  just  a  remembered 
inflection,  a  turn  of  the  head  —  for  the  head,  and  the 
voice,  smooth  and  full,  but  slightly  trembling,  had  been 
seen  and  heard  before. 

"It  would  help  matters,"  said  the  visitor,  "if  you 
would  tell  me  your  reason  for  not  in  any  way  replying  to 
my  letter,  or  message,  if,  as  I  left  it  open,  it  might  have 
come  to  you  in  the  form  of  a  message." 

"But,"  Neith  audibly  wondered,  "what  letter,  what 
message?" 

"You  received  none,  then?"  She  appeared  to  think 
for  a  minute,  calculating  unguessed  chances,  and  at  last 
frankly  said,  "Will  you  kindly  tell  me,  then,  as  the 
surest  way  of  my  not  making  a  mistake,  are  you  — 
engaged  to  Adam  Frear?" 

"The  engagement  has  not  been  announced,"  Neith 
heard  herself  presently  replying,  and  decided  that  it  was 
the  right  response  to  have  made.  The  woman  she  now 
knew  her  visitor  to  be,  could  have  only  the  best  of  rea 
sons  for  inquiring.  She  went  a  little  farther  in  the  secu 
rity  of  her  own  position.  "I  suppose  there  is  no  objection, 
since  it  interests  you,  to  saying  that  it  probably  will  be 
immediately  on  Mr.  Frear's  return  from  Washington." 


268  NO.  26  JAYNE  STREET 

The  visitor  appeared  to  turn  this  over  in  her  mind  for 
some  time.  "Am  I  to  take  it,  then,"  she  brought  out  at 
last,  "that  this  is  all  the  answer  you  intend,  either  of 
you,  to  make  to  my  claim?" 

Immense  and  crashing  silences. 

"You  must  realize,"  Neith  found  strength  for,  "that 
this  is  the  first,  absolutely  the  first,  I  have  known  or 
suspected  of  your  having  any  claim  in  that  connection." 
She  hoped  that  her  voice  was  free  from  a  vague  antago 
nism  that  she  felt  shaping  behind  it,  as  vague  as  she  felt 
it  to  be  mean. 

"You  really  did  not,  then,  receive  my  message?  "  Her 
visitor  spoke  with  relief,  as  if  the  fact  put  them  on  a  foot 
ing  more  workable  if  not  actually  more  cordial. 

Neith  shook  her  head.  "No  message  whatever." 

When  her  visitor  spoke  again,  as  she  did  after  an  in 
terval,  it  was  with  a  measured  seriousness  that  poured 
about  Neith  with  the  effect  of  substance,  fixing  the  situ 
ation  at  just  that  level  of  impersonal  high-mindedness 
against  which  she  felt  every  instinct,  meanly  as  she 
knew  it,  rise  and  bristle. 

"When  I  first  heard  that  there  was  you,  at  least  that 
there  was  some  one,"  she  said,  "though  I  did  not  make 
the  slightest  effort  to  discover  your  identity,  I  felt  that 
the  utmost  fairness  to  us  both  demanded  that  you 
should  hear  my  protest  against  a  situation  so  absolutely 
unjust,  not  only  to  me,  but  to  the  whole  profession 
which  made  the  situation  possible  in  the  first  place.  I 
asked  Adam  to  put  it  to  you,  leaving  him  the  option  of 


NO.  26  JAYNE  STREET  269 

doing  so  by  means  of  a  letter  which  I  wrote,  or  by  word 
of  mouth.  Since  you  received  neither,  I  have  felt  justi 
fied  in  seeking  you  out  as  I  have  done,  and  putting  the 
case  to  you  directly." 

Perhaps  she  supposed  she  had  done  it,  for  she  re 
mained  silent  for  some  minutes,  until  at  last  Neith, 
groping  for  her  own  clue,  ventured.  "May  I  ask  why,  in 
the  first  place,  you  undertook  to  conduct  such  an  in 
quiry  anonymously?" 

"Because  I  felt  that  the  situation  at  its  best  involved 
too  much  that  was  personal  to  be  trusted  to  anything 
but  its  essentials.  You  can  guess  that  if  with  Mr.  Frear, 
I  had  been  shocked  to  discover  that  the  personal  issue  so 
far  outweighed  all  those  principles  of  conduct  to  which 
he  was  publicly  committed,  that  it  might  even  be  the  case 
with  you,  whom  I  did  not  know  to  be  committed  at  all. 
From  the  first  it  has  been  my  contention  that,  by  his 
own  act,  Mr.  Frear  had  put  the  case  clear  outside  the 
personal  consideration." 

"If  it  isn't  personal,  then"  —  Neith  saw  her  way 
clear  to  that  —  "why  do  I  come  into  it?" 

"Because  I  had  understood  from  Mr.  Frear  that  there 
was,  or  was  about  to  be,  complete  identification  of  in 
terests  between  you." 

Neith  sat  tight  in  her  chair;  her  hands  clasped  one 
another  with  the  deep,  almost  submerging  conscious 
ness  that  she  must  not  fail  Adam  at  this  juncture.  She 
must  act  somehow  within  that  complete  identification 
of  their  interests  which  their  visitor  had  so  freely  ac- 


270  NO.  26  JAYNE  STREET 

knowledged.  But  how,  by  what  criterion,  if  not  by  that 
gentle,  impartial  justice  which  was  the  best  she  knew  of 
him? 

"You  forget,"  she  said  at  last,  "that  I  do  not  yet 
know  what  your  case  is." 

"Simply  that,  until  quite  recently,  there  was  that  same 
identity  of  interest  between  us,  and  that  I  had  been  led 
to  understand  it  would  be,  it  was  in  its  nature,  per 
manent." 

"You  mean  — "  Neith  wondered;  and  then  hastened 
to  fill  the  gap  in  her  own  slow  comprehension,  instinc 
tively  fighting  for  time  in  which  to  face  all  that  her  visi 
tor  might  have  meant.  "If  you  have  any  claim,  any 
charge  against  Mr.  Frear,  I  think  I  should  prefer  not  to 
hear  it  until  he  can  be  present  to  answer  it." 

"Ah,  how  can  I  tell  whether  you  will  think  it  against 
him  or  not?"  her  visitor  all  but  cried  out.  "You  may 
agree  with  him  that  it  is  so  little  a  claim  that  you  may 
not  even  wish  to  discuss  it. 

"It  was  one  of  the  chances  I  had  to  take,"  she  added 
after  an  interval.  "Of  all  the  chances,  it  was  the  one,  on 
the  whole,  that  I  most  expected.  I  was  judging  from 
some  hint  I  had  received  —  or  perhaps  from  the  sort  of 
woman  I  thought  Adam  would  have  been  most  likely  to 
have  been  interested  in.  But  now  — "  She  glanced  about 
the  room,  taking  in  to  the  full  its  revelation  of  fineness. 
"I  see  now,"  she  said  quietly,  but  with  a  steady  com 
mand  of  herself.  "I  see  that  I  have  exposed  myself  to 
the  chance  of  your  not  understanding  me  at  all.  To  the 


NO.  26  JAYNE  STREET  271 

chance  of  your  seeing  in  the  very  claim  that  I  make,  an 
excuse  for  denying  it." 

"No."  Neith  met  her  firmly.  "I  don't  know  what  you 
see  in  my  room  that  you  should  think  that  of  me.  But  if 
you  remember  at  all  where  you  first  saw  me,  you  would 
know  that  it  would  be  enough  for  me  to  know  that  you 
make  it,  Miss  Matlock,  to  be  satisfied  of  your  right  to 
be  heard." 

She  rose  and  moved  across  to  the  other  window  in 
stinctively  to  spare  herself  the  shock  that  the  other 
woman  might  feel  in  the  discovery  of  her  identity.  "Be 
fore  long,"  she  said,  "you  would  have  remembered  that 
I  was  with  Mrs.  Kendries  the  day  you  brought  Miss 
Obernaur  to  talk  about  the  rehabilitation  of  the  dis 
carded  factory  workers.  You  cannot  suppose  that  I 
would  have  supported  you  so  heartily  on  their  behalf, 
and  not  have  heard  you  with  equal  justice  on  your 
own." 

Neith  remained  standing,  looking  out  at  the  racing 
children  in  the  street.  She  had  taken  hold  of  the  curtain 
for  support,  and  let  go  of  it  again  as  she  perceived  that 
it  shook  to  her  trembling.  She  heard,  after  a  moment, 
the  other  woman  move  behind  her,  and  turned  to  find 
her  at  her  side. 

"My  dear  Miss  Schuyler,"  she  said,  "will  you  let  me 
say  that  I  understand,  since  you  are  who  you  are,  that 
this  must  be  a  great  shock  to  you?  As  great,"  she  fin 
ished,  "as  it  was  —  as  it  is  "  —  with  the  first  touch  of 
wildness  she  had  displayed  —  "to  me." 


272  NO.  26  JAYNE  STREET 

"It  shocks  me  so  much,"  Neith  answered  her  with 
returning  composure,  "to  discover  that  there  can  be 
any  question  of  injustice,  and  above  all  things,  of  injus 
tice  to  you,  in  anything  that  Mr.  Frear  does,  that  I  feel 
sure  there  is  only  some  cruel  misunderstanding,  and  I 
shall  ask  you  to  wait  until  he  comes,  as  he  must  come 
soon,  to  clear  it  up." 

"Adam  coming  here?  Here?  "  She  was  visibly  stricken. 
Her  face  under  the  wide  brow  was  a  tragic  mask. 

"I  have  been  expecting  him  on  any  train  this  after 
noon,  from  Washington.  He  will  come  directly  here,  I 
think." 

Miss  Matlock  recovered  herself  with  an  effort.  "Do 
you  wish,  then,  that  I  should  go,  should  leave  you  to 
hear  the  facts  first  from  him,  since  I  am  sure  now  that 
you  will  hear  them?" 

"If  you  felt  you  could  stay  ..."  What  Neith  felt  her 
self  was  that  never  in  the  world  could  she  open  this 
matter  to  Adam  Frear. 

"It  would  be  shorter  —  only  — "  Miss  Matlock 
searched  the  younger  woman's  face  with  a  keen,  clear 
look,  while  her  own  strained  and  whitened.  "You  must 
understand  that  I  have  already  suffered  much  in  this 
connection.  I  don't  know  that  I  can  come  through  such 
an  interview  as  calmly  as  Adam  would  wish.  I  must  tell 
you,"  with  sudden  energy,  "that  I  have  n't  followed 
the  common  American  prejudice  in  favor  of  special 
emotions.  I  have  n't  been  in  the  habit  of  thinking  it 
any  more  dignified  —  or  any  less  —  to  laugh  than  to 


NO.  26  JAYNE  STREET  273 

cry,  and  on  the  whole  rather  better  to  be  able  to  do 
one  or  the  other  than  to  be  evasive  or  untrue." 

"With  me  and  with  Mr.  Frear,"  Neith  took  that  high 
ground  easily,  "you  will  have  no  occasion  to  be  either 
of  the  latter." 

"No?" 

Neith  winced  under  something  sharp  that  whipped 
almost  to  the  surface  of  the  other  woman's  manner. 
"Adam  won't,  at  least,  lie  about  the  facts,"  Miss  Mat- 
lock  conceded. 

§54 

They  sat  down  again  by  common  consent  in  their 
former  places,  with  half  the  width  of  the  room  between 
them.  Miss  Matlock  looked  at  her  watch. 

"There's  a  Washington  train  at  four.  It's  twenty 
minutes  past." 

"He  may  go  to  his  room  before  coming  on  here," 
Neith  contributed. 

"I  wonder  if  you  can  understand,"  Miss  Matlock  be 
gan  again,  quite  as  if  the  interval  of  commonplace  had 
never  happened,  "that  when  I  finally  made  up  my  mind 
to  protest  against  a  situation  that  did  so  much  injustice 
to  all  my  life  stands  for,  that  I  decided  on  just  this 
method.  Coming  to  you,  I  mean,  as  the  one  least  likely 
to  expose  Mr.  Frear  to  any  lessening  of  the  place  and 
power  he  has  in  men's  minds.  Because,  if  it  were  n't  for 
that,  at  such  a  time  as  this,  once  I  had  made  up  my 
mind,  I  should  n't  have  shrunk  from  anything.  When 


274  NO.  26  JAYNE  STREET 

you  think  what  people  are  going  through  now  for  ques 
tions  of  abstract  justice  —  that  poor  Leninsky  that  the 
police  beat  to  death  — 

"Not  that  I  believe  Adam  can  really  accomplish  any 
genuine  thing  for  freedom  as  long  as  he  denies  it  in  him 
self.  It's  because  he  could  really  accomplish  so  much 
that  I  have  waited  all  these  months.  To  give  him  a 
chance  to  see,  to  come  to  the  free  admission  of  his  case 
himself,  and  not  to  drive  him  to  it  with  the  fear  of  public 
disgrace." 

"Oh,  no  /"  Neith  strangled  with  dismay.  Then,  with 
sudden  hope,  "This  isn't  anything  that  you  and  I 
could  settle  between  us?  Without  bringing  it  to  his 
notice,  I  mean." 

"Oh,  as  far  as  you  and  I  are  concerned  —  and  as  far 
as  anything  Adam  can  do  —  I  don't  know  what  he  can 
do,  now!  But  the  important  thing,  the  thing  that  keeps 
me  trying  for  some  method  of  making  him  see,  is  that  he 
should  just  see." 

As  if  this  were  the  point  at  which  her  mind  had  hung 
so  long  baffled  that  she  could  never  get  by  it  without 
setting  out  on  some  unhappy  journey  of  bewildered 
speculation,  she  sheered  away  from  Neith  and  sat  star 
ing  bleakly  at  her  trouble.  "I  must  see  myself,"  she  half 
whispered,  under  some  urge  more  exigent  than  Neith 
could  divine;  "I  must  know  what  this  is  that  I  have 
come  against.  I  must  know  ! " 

Nothing  in  this  seemed  to  call  for  a  response.  Neith, 
under  the  folds  of  her  dress,  gripped  her  chair,  feeling 


NO.  26  JAYNE  STREET  275 

for  some  measure  of  reality.  Clearly  as  it  seemed  to  be 
stated,  that  something  unfaithful  to  the  interpretation 
she  herself  had  put  on  her  engagement  to  Adam  Frear 
had  gone  on  between  him  and  this  woman,  nothing  in 
her  experience  helped  her  to  shape  it  as  a  fact.  No  reac 
tions  out  of  her  late  adventure  in  Democracy  came  to 
her  relief.  Out  of  her  Van  Droom-Schuyler  inheritance 
old  instincts  rallied  to  the  defense  of  her  security  by 
covering  the  author  of  this  menace  with  contempt. 
Was  n't  it  enough  for  this  woman  whom,  as  seemed  cer 
tain,  Adam  had  once  preferred,  that  he  now  preferred 
somebody  else?  Why  should  Rose  Matlock  come  crying 
to  her  for  the  broken  faith  of  a  man?  .  .  .  She  choked 
audibly  as  she  pulled  herself  back  from  the  pit  into 
which  she  felt  herself  flounder  along  with  poor  Emmy 
and  Aunt  Doremas.  The  sound  of  her  strangled  breath 
brought  Rose  Matlock  back  to  the  consideration  of  her 
as  an  element  in  her  own  situation. 

"Just  how  much,"  she  inquired,  "do  you  know  of  me 
—  personally,  I  mean?" 

"What  Madelon  Sherrod  told  me." 

"Then,  at  least,  you  know  that  I  had  very  little  rea 
son  for  thinking  of  the  personal  relation  between  men 
and  women  as  a  thing  to  be  cultivated  for  its  own  sake. 
You  will  believe  me  when  I  say  that  what  happened  be 
tween  me  and  Mr.  Frear  was  not  of  my  seeking.  I  was 
teaching  in  a  western  college  when  I  met  him.  He  came 
to  deliver  a  course  of  lectures.  It  was  his  fine  impersonal 
ity  that  interested  me  then,  that  and  his  way  of  basing 


276  NO.  26  JAYNE  STREET 

all  his  social  conclusions  not  on  theories  and  hypotheses, 
but  on  facts.  I  was  so  far  from  thinking  of  him  person 
ally  then  that  I  was  surprised,  when  I  came  on  to  New 
York  two  or  three  years  later,  to  find  that  he  had  been 
thinking  of  me  so  all  that  time." 

"A— ah!" 

'  It  was  an  involuntary  notice  of  pure  pain,  but  it 
passed  for  the  call  to  attention  as  a  step  on  the  stair  out 
side  sounded  and  resounded  through  the  quiet  rooms. 
The  step  passed  their  door  and  ascended  the  next  story. 

With  a  little  easing  of  the  breath  after  the  moment 
of  suspense,  Rose  Matlock  went  quietly  on. 

"I  don't  know  whether  you  can  understand,"  she 
said,  "that  even  then  I  was  far  more  influenced  by  his 
need  of  me  than  by  anything  I  wanted  for  myself.  Ex 
cept  that,  like  everybody  who  was  beginning  to  think  in 
terms  of  the  whole  of  Society,  he  was  indispensable.  As 
a  leader,  I  mean,  as  an  interpreter  of  events. 

"He  needed  me  ..."  She  lost  herself  for  a  moment  in 
her  own  inward  speculation  on  that  point,  and  came  to 
her  conclusion  afresh.  "Yes.  I  am  sure  that  I  was  of  use 
to  him.  He  had  lost  the  first  flare  of  his  inspiration,  and 
his  second  wind  was  slow  to  come.  I  suppose,"  said  Rose 
Matlock,  with  that  stark  honesty  at  which  Neith  oddly 
felt  the  bristles  of  all  her  inherited  social  instincts  arise, 
"that  if  he  had  clearly  asked  me  to  take  a  place  in  his 
life  as  a  stop-gap,  as  a  bough  to  be  momentarily  leaned 
upon,  I  should  have  felt  —  so  little  did  I  feel  myself  at 
the  time  —  that  it  was  one  way  in  which  I  could  have 


NO.  26  JAYNE  STREET  277 

served  the  social  need — "  She  broke  off.  In  the  dusk 
Neith  caught  the  gesture  of  her  speaking  hands.  "Ah!" 
she  cried,  "if  I  could  but  just  talk  to  Adam  like  this.  If 
I  could  just  be  sure  of  his  listening  as  you  listen  — " 

But  it  was  just  sitting  there  listening  that  Neith  her 
self  felt  unequal  to. 

"We  must  have  a  light!"  she  heard  herself  saying,  as 
she  groped  for  the  electric  button,  groping  at  the  same 
time  for  something  better  in  herself  than  the  impulse  to 
tell  Adam,  when  he  came,  to  take  this  woman  away  and 
to  settle  with  her  on  whatever  grounds  it  was  customary 
for  men  to  settle  —  oh,  whatever  it  was  that  went  on 
between  men  and  women  on  such  occasions,  but  not  to 
drag  her  into  it!  She  turned  on  the  candles  on  either  side 
the  Georgian  mantel,  and  the  reading-lamp  in  the  back 
room.  So  resolutely  did  she  hold  her  mind  back  from 
hoping  that  in  the  new  step  on  the  stair  he  was  coming 
to  do  just  that  thing,  that  his  quick,  final  ring  struck  her 
with  sharp  surprise. 

§55 

The  instinct  of  the  trained  interviewer,  and  some 
emanation  from  the  charged  atmosphere  of  the  room, 
operated  to  bring  Adam  Frear  over  the  threshold  and 
full  into  sight  of  the  unsuspected  visitor  without  having 
committed  himself  to  anything  that  might  have  been 
expected  of  him,  in  his  meeting,  after  an  absence  of  three 
days,  with  the  young  woman  he  soon  and  so  happily 
expected  to  marry, 


278  NO.  26  JAYNE  STREET 

His  hat  was  in  his  hand  and  the  light  overcoat  which 
fitted  him,  as  did  everything  he  wore,  with  such  unos 
tentatious  grace,  was  thrown  open  to  the  slight  warmth 
of  the  room  as  he  advanced,  holding  in  check,  but  with 
out  any  anticipation  of  frustration,  that  ready  overflow 
of  charm  with  which  he  habitually  met  her. 

And  instantly,  without  apparently  having  heard  the 
confused  half  warning  from  his  fiancee,  the  whole  sur 
face  of  him  was  ripped  as  by  a  blade.  There  was  an  ef 
fect  almost  of  substance  in  his  wrath,  of  sensible  heat 
and  explosion  in  the  white  flash  of  his  teeth  between 
drawn  lips,  the  hot  spark  of  his  eye,  the  flamelike  spurt 
of  his  voice. 

"  You ! "  he  said.  "What  did  I  tell  you  if  you  dared — " 

Oh,  it  had  gone  on!  It  had  raged  between  those  two; 
it  leaped  and  licked  at  the  edges  of  every  word. 

"Ah,  I  told  you,  Adam,  that  no  affair,  in  which  I  was 
so  deeply  and  intimately  concerned  as  this,  would  be 
allowed  to  go  on  without  my  having  a  voice  in  it." 

"I  deny  that  you  are  concerned  in  my  affairs  at  all." 

There  was  a  note  almost  of  anguish  in  his  wrath.  It 
reached  his  fiancee  through  the  swift,  affronting  sur 
prise  and  waked  a  flutter  of  tenderness. 

"Won't  you  sit  down,  Adam?" 

He  heard  her  so  far  that  he  laid  his  hand  on  the  chair 
which  she  so  pointedly  offered  him.  He  continued  to 
look  at  the  other  woman,  badgered  and  sullen. 

"What  do  you  want?" 

It  was  almost  more  than  she  could  bear  that  he  yet  so 


NO.  26  JAYNE  STREET  279 

evidently  did  n't  know,  that  he  bristled  with  suspicion, 
that  he  imputed  to  her  mere  being  there  horrors  of  the 
impossible,  the  unrelated.  Neith  saw  Miss  Matlock  visi 
bly  flinch  and  make  with  her  fine  hands  the  instinctive 
half  gesture  of  renewed  despair. 

"Justice,"  she  said. 

"Justice!"  His  voice  took  on  a  note  of  fretfulness. 
"As  if  there  were  justice  in  an  affair  of  the  emotions!  I 
told  you  all  that  was  over." 

"No,  you  only  told  me  it  was  over  for  you.  Of  what  I 
feel,  you  must  leave  me  to  be  the  best  judge." 

There  was  the  beginning  again  of  the  quick  snarl 
which  had  greeted  the  first  intimation  of  her  presence, 
but  he  had  himself  better  in  hand. 

"I  am  not  interested,"  he  thrust,  "in  what  you  may 
be  feeling." 

"Well,  then,"  she  came  steadily  back  to  him,  "you 
can't  expect  from  me  that  extenuating  interest,  which 
you  seem  to  expect,  in  what  you  feel." 

He  gave  way  to  pure  exasperation.  He  let  fall  the 
back  of  the  chair  which  he  had  been  holding  uncon 
sciously  as  a  matador  holds  his  cloak  as  a  shield  for  his 
thrust,  and  turned  between  anger  and  frustration  to 
Neith.  "Do  you  understand  what  she  wants?" 

It  occurred  to  Miss  Schuyler  that  many  of  their  in 
terviews  might  have  ended  thus,  in  the  blankness  of 
missed  understanding.  His  helplessness  touched  her 
again  to  warmth. 

"I  think  so,  a  little,  Adam."  She  came  close.  He  was 


280  NO.  26  JAYNE  STREET 

taller  than  she,  and  as  he  looked  down  at  her  in  his  for 
the  moment  honest  bewilderment,  he  was  assuaged  by 
the  perception  that,  in  spite  of  all  that  had  passed,  he 
still  stood  within  the  reach  of  her  tenderness.  "I  think 
Miss  Matlock  feels,  for  one  thing,  that  you  have  n't  any 
more  right  to  be  angry  with  her  for  coming  here  than 
she  would  have  for  being  with  you  for  —  well,  not  tell 
ing  me  what  she  wanted  you  to  tell  me  in  the  first  place." 

"  Telling  you  ?  "  A  new  shade  of  bewilderment  hovered 
on  his  face  and  passed  before  an  indefinably  newer 
shade  of  comprehension  that,  however,  seemed  to  have 
nothing  to  do  with  the  problem  in  hand.  She  was  to 
remember  that  afterward  as  the  sore  scar  of  a  wound 
unfelt  when  given. 

"Why,  yes,  Adam,  if  Miss  Matlock,  or  any  one,  had  a 
claim  on  you,  I  could  n't  marry  you,  without  its  becom 
ing  in  a  way  a  claim  against  me.  And  I  would  n't  want 
to  marry  you,  Adam,  with  any  woman's  unsatisfied 
claim  against  you,"  she  brought  out  clearly.  "We're 
neither  of  us  so  poor  that  it  is  necessary  for  us  to  do 
that:9 

"But  claim,  what  claim?  ..."  Hot,  intolerable  anger 
fairly  shook  him.  It  leaped  past  her  to  strike,  with  the 
full  force  of  a  bolt,  the  other  woman  in  the  breast.  "I 
never  promised  her  I  would  marry  her." 

"Ah  —  !" 

He  did  not  know  which  of  the  women  uttered  that, 
but  he  saw  that  his  fiancee  had  recoiled  from  him,  and 
the  other  woman  sprang  to  her  feet,  so  that  they  stood 


NO.  26  JAYNE  STREET 

now  in  respect  to  their  former  positions,  those  two  to 
gether  against  him.  Quick  as  he  naturally  was,  thick 
anger  prevented  his  seeing  that  this  new  and  so  amaz 
ing  alignment  had  come  about  through  the  very  fury  of 
repudiation  which  had  allowed  him,  unnecessarily,  to 
tell  too  much.  The  realization  reached  him,  by  just  the 
interval  it  took  for  the  slow,  full  voice  of  Rose  Matlock 
to  give  him  the  chilled  steel  of  her  rejoinder. 

"No,"  she  said.  "What  you  did  give  me  to  under 
stand  was  that  you  had." 

He  perceived  now,  his  natural  adroitness  aroused  by 
the  abyss  which  his  own  words  had  suddenly  opened 
under  his  feet,  that  to  slacken  or  to  attempt  to  go  back 
would  be  but  to  fall,  into  it  the  more  deeply.  If  he  was 
to  go  on  from  there  at  all  successfully,  he  must  clear  it 
with  a  rush. 

"Well,  then,  if  it  is  n't  to  have  me  marry  you,  what  is 
it  you  want  me  to  do? "  And  heard  Rose  Matlock's  voice 
after  him  like  the  falling  of  stones  under  his  scarce  se 
curely  landed  feet,  measuring  the  full  depth. 

"Why,  principally  that  you  should  admit  and  con 
duct  yourself  toward  me  in  the  light  of  that  admission, 
as  if  you  had." 

He  gathered  from  some  slight  movement  of  Miss 
Schuyler's  that  she  concurred  in  this  statement,  that  it 
actually  had  for  her  also  the  extraordinary  lucidity  that 
it  appeared  to  have.  She  turned  toward  him  with  a  half- 
involuntary  motion  of  her  hand  as  if,  finding  the  situ 
ation  extraordinarily  simplified,  she  would  have  drawn 


282  NO.  26  JAYNE  STREET 

him  into  some  visible  expression  of  a  restored,  a  com 
pleted  harmony.  The  gesture  ended  with  the  raising  of 
both  hands  to  her  face,  where  they  lingered  for  a  mo 
ment's  oblivion  of  all  they  saw,  and  the  slow  with 
drawal  of  her  attention  back  to  Rose  Matlock. 

Neith  found  her  in  all  respects  amazing.  Stricken  as 
she  saw  her  now,  in  the  full  light,  to  be,  so  that  slow 
tears  gathered  and  fell  unconsciously  as  drops  oozing 
from  a  wound,  she  had  abated  nothing  of  the  fine  integ 
rity  of  her  claim.  What  she  wanted,  beyond  that  which 
she  so  pitiably  needed  at  that  moment,  acknowledg 
ment  of  that  integrity  from  the  man  who  defied  her, 
Neith  could  not  wholly  make  out.  All  she  knew  was  that 
suddenly  she  could  not  bear  to  see  any  woman  so  racked 
and  tormented.  She  could  not  bear  to  see  Adam  Frear  so 
cruelly  and  stupidly  beyond  the  reach,  equally  of  that 
integrity  and  that  torment. 

As  he  stood  there  between  them,  bristling  with  sus 
picion,  she  saw  that  he  had  no  feeling  for  the  scene 
except  that  it  was  a  scene;  a  move  in  a  game  which 
was  being  played  not  quite  in  conformity  with  the  rules 
as  he  knew  them.  Neith  felt  the  need  on  her  part,  of  a 
compensating  openness  of  mind. 

"So  far  as  I  understand  you,  Miss  Matlock,"  she 
said,  "I  want  you  to  know  that  I  agree  with  you;  that 
whatever  claim  you  have  against  Mr.  Frear,  can't  be 
wholly  decided  by  what  he  thinks  about  it.  And  if  I  say 
to  you  now  that  I  would  rather  that  it  should  n't  be 
referred  to  me,  it  is  not  because  I  am  indifferent,  but 


NO.  26  JAYNE  STREET  283 

because  .  .  .  because,  as  you  must  see,  I  can't  bear  that 
such  a  thing  should  have  come  about  that  you  find  it 
necessary  to  refer  it  to  me." 

"You  must  judge  for  yourself,"  said  Rose  Matlock, 
"how  necessary  it  has  been." 

They  moved  together  toward  Frear  as  if  some  com 
mon  agreement  had  transpired  between  them,  and 
stopped,  facing  him  as  if  for  the  finish  of  his  consent.  He 
had  recovered  in  the  interval  a  little  of  his  habitual 
gentle  detachment. 

"But  not  to  judge  me,"  he  insisted,  "without  giving 
me  time  to  say  that  I  don't  yet,  that  I  have  never  quite 
understood  what  it  is  that  is  required  of  me." 

"It's  that,"  said  his  fiancee,  "that  I  can't  bear,  your 
not  understanding."  She  was  near  to  the  breaking  point. 
"I  can't  bear  any  more  now  of  anything." 

"You  shan't,  dear  Miss  Schuyler,"  Miss  Matlock 
generously  interposed,  "  if  you  would  get  me  a  cab, 
Adam."  He  rallied  completely  to  that. 

"There's  a  cab-stand  on  Sixth,  near  Waverley  Place, 
if  you  would  let  me  take  you  there."  He  took  her  fur 
which  had  fallen  from  her  arm  and  placed  it  across  her 
shoulders. 

Neith,  watching,  felt  indeed  she  could  bear  nothing 
more.  "He  has  been  unkind  to  her,  he  has,  he  has!"  she 
cried  to  herself.  Deeper,  she  felt  how  kind  he  must  once 
have  been  that  a  woman  should  be  so  moved  as  Rose 
Matlock  visibly  was,  at  so  common  a  courtesy  from 
him. 


284  NO.  26  JAYNE  STREET 

XVIII 

§56 

IT  was  half-past  ten  of  the  next  morning  that  Neith 
found  herself,  by  some  obscure  impulse  which  she  did 
not  come  out  of  her  own  confusion  sufficiently  to  ana 
lyze,  threading  the  waste  of  packing-cases  along  one  of 
the  western  tributaries  of  the  Bowery,  on  the  way  to 
visit  Sadie  Leninsky. 

Sadie  had  selected  two  rooms  in  Delancey  Street  as 
an  alternative  to  the  year  in  the  country  which  Neith 
had  offered  her.  There  was,  of  course,  the  consideration 
of  what  the  year  in  the  country  would  do  for  the  baby. 
And  there  was  what  it  would  n't  do  for  Sadie  herself. 
For  the  baby  had  somehow,  in  spite  of  the  high  adven 
ture  of  its  immediate  inheritance  —  perhaps  because  of 
it,  as  if  the  two  young  parents  had  struggled  so  hard 
against  the  conditions  of  living,  they  had  nothing  left 
for  the  struggle  for  life  —  failed  of  the  fortunate  varia 
tion  from  its  long  line  of  overtaxed  mothers  and  intimi 
dated  fathers.  If  it  survived  its  second  summer,  it  would 
only  be  as  a  fixed  point  from  which  to  measure  Sadie's 
own  survival,  her  one  chance  of  being  numbered  among 
her  chosen  tribe  of  Intellectuals. 

It  was  with  some  such  ironically  sympathetic  touch 
that  Neith  could  still  think  of  Sadie  Leninsky.  She  was 
still  too  numbed  by  the  bolt  from  her  own  blue  to  realize 
what,  within  an  appreciable  number  of  minutes,  she  was 


NO.  26  JAYNE  STREET  285 

to  discover;  that  she  had  been  thrown  by  the  shock  into 
that  region  of  unassimilable  behaviors  along  with  Sadie 
herself. 

She  had  seen  Adam  Frear  for  an  hour  the  previous 
evening.  He  had  rung  up  and  begged  for  that,  which  she 
did  n't  see  any  advantage  in  refusing  him.  And  when  he 
had  come,  she  had  given  way  simply  to  the  need  of  hu 
man  sympathy  and  cried  quietly  on  his  shoulder.  Where 
else  can  a  woman  go  when  she  is  hurt  by  her  lover,  but 
on  past  the  barb  to  the  very  centers  from  which  it  took 
its  flight?  She  had  cried  there,  then,  for  relief  in  the  as 
surance  of  its  being  still  open  to  her  to  cry  upon  his 
shoulder.  And  it  was  only  by  degrees,  as  he  attempted 
to  comfort  her,  that  she  woke  to  new  and  more  barbed 
realizations  that  this  secret  center  in  which  she  had  im 
agined  herself  at  home,  was  a  strange,  an  unknowable 
place. 

He  had  begun  with  murmured  endearments  and  in 
timations  which  he  was  so  practiced  to  convey,  by  in 
tonations,  by  gestures,  by  the  whole  range  of  gentle 
seeming.  If  she  had  had  an  equal  capacity  for  conveying 
her  own  meaning,  they  might  then  and  there  have  come 
to  fruitful  understanding. 

If  she  could  have  spoken  out  and  said  what  moved 
her,  which  was  simply  that,  having  come  to  America  to 
escape  the  pressure  of  irremediable  human  misery,  it 
was  the  last  unbearable  item  to  have  to  meet  it  in  this 
new  personal  shape  in  the  very  spot  she  had  chosen  for 
refuge.  If  she  could  have  communicated  to  him  that 


286  NO.  26  JAYNE  STREET 

sense  she  had,  in  common  with  millions,  of  being  carried 
by  the  shock  of  war  past  any  capacity  on  her  own  part 
to  be  the  cause  of  suffering  in  others;  if  she  could  have 
somehow  given  him  to  understand  that  it  was  the  pain 
of  the  other  woman's  pain  that  she  cried  for  —  But,  in 
fact,  he  understood  nothing  of  the  sort. 

"If  you  don't  know,  my  dear,  that  I  would  have  given 
anything  in  the  world  to  have  spared  you  this — "  he 
had  begun. 

"Ah,  if  you  had,  if  you  had!"  She  went  so  far  as 
to  shape  the  words,  and  bit  them  back,  not  even  to 
seem  to  reproach.  "Give,  then,"  was  what  she  finally 
said. 

"One  thing  I  have  given  her  to  understand,"  he  de 
clared,  "that  she  must  not  come  here  troubling  you.  I 
have  told  her  that  unless  she  keeps  away  from  you 
I  shall  never  see  her  again." 

He  felt  his  fiancee  draw  away  from  him,  as  he  hoped, 
assured. 

"  But,  Adam  — "  Not  yet  did  she  measure  the  gap  be 
tween  their  ultimate  meanings.  "I  think  it  better  for  me 
to  hear  everything  from  her,"  she  finally  said. 

"My  dear,  I  assure  you  that  it  does  not  concern  you. 
That  was  over,  on  my  honor;  it  was  over  before  our 
engagement  began." 

"Over  ...  for  you,"  she  made  out.  "But,  Adam,  how 
can  a  thing  like  that,  in  which  two  people  are  so  inti 
mately  concerned,  be  over  just  because  one  of  them  has 
—  changed?"  She  thought  of  Frances  Eittenhouse,  of 


NO.  26  JAYNE  STREET  287 

Madelon  Sherrod,  of  her  father.  She  thought  confusedly 
of  the  autocracy  of  social  and  political  opinion  against 
which  all  his  work  was  directed. 

He  frankly  stared.  But  he  was  wary  now,  on  his  guard. 
He  realized  that  he  had  missed  his  footing  in  the  after 
noon,  and  meant  not  to  do  so  again. 

With  great  reasonableness,  and  without  attempting 
to  draw  her  to  his  breast  again,  he  asked  her,  "Just 
what  did  she  tell  you?" 

"Ah,  she  had  n't  told  me  anything,  much.  It  was  you 
who  told." 

It  rang  out  in  the  manner  of  an  accusation.  He  cov 
ered  a  rising  flush. 

"If  I  made  the  mistake,"  he  began,  "of  supposing 
that  we  were  all  of  us  past  the  point  of  being  sensitive 
about  things  being  'told,'  as  you  put  it  — " 

"What  you  don't  see,  Adam,  is  that  it  was  her  experi 
ence.  At  the  very  least  it  was  half  her  experience,  even 
more,  if,  as  you  tell  me,  you  had  renounced  it.  If,  on 
your  own  showing,  it  had  ceased  to  be  yours.  It  was  for 
her  to  say  how  much  she  wanted  me  to  know.  She 
might,"  she  gently  warned  him,  "have  not  meant  me 
even  to  be  troubled  about  it  as  much  as  —  as  much  as 
I  feel  I  am  going  to  be." 

He  felt  himself  so  completely  at  fault,  and  it  was  a 
situation  in  which  he  was  so  little  accustomed  to  find 
himself,  that  he  two  or  three  times  opened  his  mouth  to 
speak  without  finding  anything  to  say.  His  silence  gave 
leave  to  his  fiancee  to  complete  the  thought  that  was  in 


288  NO.  26  JAYNE  STREET 

her  own  mind.  "After  all,  we  must  remember,  Adam, 
that  she  is  Rose  Matlock." 

"But  Rose  Matlock!"  He  was  now  so  wholly  at  sea 
that  he  had  no  objection  to  letting  her  discover  it,  feel 
ing  that  on  this  point,  at  least,  he  could  n't  well  be  more 
innocent  than  he  was. 

i  "You  are  so  used,  Adam"  —  she  took  a  gentler  note 
with  him  on  a  point  that  showed  slightly  to  his  credit  — 
"to  moving  among  notables  that  you  don't  always  real 
ize  that  I  am  a  nobody  myself.  It  is  for  a  woman  like 
Rose  Matlock  to  decide  how  much  of  her  affairs  a 
woman  like  me  can  be  trusted  to  know.  And  she  did  n't 
really  know  me  at  all.  I  might  have  been  —  horrid!" 

"You  are  amazing!" 

He  was  disposed,  if  she  had  allowed  him,  to  let  the 
whole  situation  go  as  a  part  of  that  mystery  of  feminin 
ity  which  men  love  to  make  of  their  own  obtuseness.  He 
was  relieved,  at  any  rate,  to  find  himself  so  much  en 
gaged  to  her  still  that  he  could  presently  put  the  whole 
matter  aside  to  talk  to  her  of  what  had  happened  the 
past  few  days  at  Washington.  The  truth  was  that  she 
was  gasping  at  heart  as  an  overtried  swimmer,  and  ac 
cepted  his  readiness  to  talk  of  Washington  as  a  fortu 
nate  shoal  of  the  impersonal  where  she  could  find  breath 
ing  space.  And  while  she  breathed  she  cast  about,  if, 
in  any  possible  direction  above  the  wide  flood  of  doubt 
and  bewilderment,  any  land  might  arise. 

He  had  not,  it  seemed,  been  successful  in  his  errand, 
which  was  to  awake  such  of  the  responsible  powers  of 


NO.  26  JAYNE  STREET  289 

government  as  he  met,  to  the  recognition  of  the  new 
forces  which  were  moving  under  the  social  upheaval  of 
Europe.  He  found  them  disposed,  as  he  said,  to  wave 
the  flag  and  to  assume  that  the  whole  matter  was  as 
simple  as  administering  a  military  defeat  to  Germany. 
He  had  found  himself  rather  put  off  the  key  of  his  in 
tended  explanation  of  European  events  as  he  saw  them, 
by  the  arrest,  on  the  very  day  of  his  interview  with  the 
President,  of  Gifford.  For  the  Labor  leader  had  dared 
to  say  openly  from  the  lecture  platform,  and  with 
trenchant  application  to  American  affairs,  the  very 
thing  that  Frear  had  expected  to  say  with  the  mild  and 
rememberable  force  for  which  he  was  distinguished. 

It  was  a  denouement  that  checked  the  whole  flow  of 
Frear's  interview  with  the  President,  not,  as  he  ex 
plained,  because  he  was  afraid  of  being  put  in  jail  him 
self,  but  for  the  revelation  of  a  certain  obtuseness  in  the 
American  point  of  view,  against  which  he  felt  himself 
powerless. 

"It's  all  part  of  our  damnable  American  optimism," 
Frear  declared,  walking  up  and  down  as  he  talked  him 
self  free  of  the  strain  and  uneasiness  of  the  personal  situ 
ation.  "Our  great  republican  prejudice  in  favor  of  the 
more  amiable  emotions!  For  years  we  have  n't  tolerated 
a  story  or  a  play  that  has  n't  a  happy  ending.  We've 
put  all  our  unhappy  endings  under  hatches  and  battened 
them  down.  And  now,  when  somebody  dares  predict  an 
unhappy  ending  for  this  European  coil,  which,  since  we 
are  in  the  war  has  become  our  coil,  we  can  do  nothing 


290  NO.  26  JAYNE  STREET 

but  put  him  in  jail."  So  long  as  she  seemed  to  listen, 
Frear  found  it  easy  to  go  on  talking.  He  had  the  capac 
ity,  acquired  by  men  whose  trade  is  lecturing,  of  climb 
ing  completely  out  of  himself  by  the  successive  rungs  of 
his  subject.  He  played  himself  into  the  masterly  mood 
as  a  virtuoso  on  his  violin. 

"It  has  been  so  long,"  he  said,  "since  any  newspaper 
or  magazine  has  had  the  courage  to  tell  the  public  any 
thing  it  does  n't  want  to  hear,  that  when  the  thing  is 
finally  done,  it  assumes  the  proportions  of  treason.  They 
did  n't  put  Gifford  in  jail  because  he  said  anything  actu 
ally  of  aid  or  comfort  to  the  enemy,  or  anything  untrue. 
He  committed  a  far  worse  offense  than  either  of  those 
things,  by  saying  something  that  the  people  did  n't  like. 
Just  did  n't  like!  At  the  very  moment  we  set  out  to  over 
throw  the  political  autocracies  of  Europe  we  set  up  here 
at  home — " 

"'An  autocracy  of  personal  feeling  the  counterpart 
of  that  we  fight  against  — '  It  was  the  first  thing  I  ever 
heard  Rose  Matlock  say,"  completed  Neith,  "but  she 
said  it  about  men  and  women  —  I  beg  your  pardon, 
Adam!" 

The  quotation  had  been  almost  automatic,  born  of 
the  obsession  of  her  mind  with  the  real  horror  of  the 
afternoon's  revelation,  and  set  in  motion  by  the  twice 
repeated  phrases  which  were  associated  with  the  name. 

"So,  then,  she  has  been  talking  to  you!"  The  words 
tore  from  him. 

"Not  to-day,  Adam,  not  in  connection  with  us.  I 


NO.  26  JAYNE  STREET  291 

did  n't  mean  —  I  had  n't  thought  of  them  myself  in  that 
connection.  But  perhaps  they  have  a  connection — " 

"Ah,  you  are  all  in  league,  you  women!" 

She  was  astonished  at  her  own  capacity  to  offend. 

"It  was  we  I  thought  were  in  league,  Adam,  you  and 
I.  I  thought  we  had  talked  this  out  so  well,  the  things 
we  have  said  about  what  a  marriage  becomes,  beside 
the  two  people  who  engage  in  it.  The  things  we  agreed  to 
about  not  hurting  anybody  — "  This  was  not  strictly 
the  case,  for  the  things  she  had  said  about  marriage  be 
ing  more  than  the  two,  had  been  said  with  Eustace  Rit- 
tenhouse.  But  what  she  had  said,  and  Frear  agreed  to, 
about  the  essence  of  liberty  lying  within  the  condition 
of  its  not  hurting  anybody,  was  too  recent  for  him  to  be 
able  to  deny  it  as  the  subject  of  one  of  those  tender  ex 
changes  which  make  up  the  play  of  courtship.  What  was 
wholly  beyond  Neith's  experience  to  divine  was,  that 
by  her  use  of  those  yielding  moments  to  fortify  her 
position  he  felt  himself  inexcusably  and  speciously  be 
trayed. 

"You  must  remember,  this  is  all  so  new  to  me."  With 
an  impulse  toward  conciliation,  seeing  that  he  bristled 
still  with  suspicion,  she  laid  her  hand  upon  his  breast, 
surprised  to  feel  the  wild  pounding  of  his  heart.  He 
suffered,  then !  She  wished  she  had  realized  earlier  that 
he  suffered. 

"I  have  n't  meant  anything,  Adam,  except  that  I  al 
ways  agree  with  you  about  things,  public  things.  But 
I'm  not  fit  to  talk  to  you  to-night  ..."  He  yielded 


292  NO.  26  JAYNE  STREET 

slowly  to  her  nearness  and  her  charm.  "We  won't  talk 
any  more  until  I  have  had  time  to  think  this  out  by 
myself." 

§57 

And  when  they  had  parted  at  last  with  no  break  in 
the  surface  of  their  relation,  she  had  crept  into  bed  in  a 
state  of  dull,  staring  wakefulness. 

It  was  a  state  in  which  intimations,  hints  of  meaning, 
moved  like  the  figures  of  a  dream  without  uncovering 
their  identity  or  declaring  their  relationship  to  any  solu 
tion.  The  one  thing  that  faced  her  squarely  out  of  the 
dark  was  the  fact  that  it  had  happened  to  her.  She  had 
known  that  such  things  happened  to  very  distinguished 
people,  people  removed  by  their  gifts  or  their  destiny  so 
far  from  the  common  lot  that  they  suffered  no  diminu 
tion  of  their  estate  in  having  such  things  happen  to 
them.  They  happened  also  to  people  like  Sadie  Lenin- 
sky,  people  toward  whom  it  was  always  possible  to  feel 
the  extenuations  of  the  social  and  personal  limitation. 
But  this  thing  had  happened  to  Neith  Schuyler! 

Why  need  it  have  happened? 

Was  this,  then,  the  meaning  of  Democracy?  Was  the 
root  of  all  she  had  come  to  America  and  fled  from  Eu 
rope  to  find,  just  this  demand  for  exemption  from  the 
disconcerting  experience  which  she  recognized  in  her 
self?  Was  the  spiritual  superiority  of  women  nothing  but 
a  determined  and  autocratic  selectiveness  in  the  kind  of 
experiences  they  would  accept  at  men's  hands?  Backed 


NO.  26  JAYNE  STREET  293 

up  by  that  other  determination  which  Aunt  Emmy  had 
so  firmly  expressed  as  the  whole  duty  of  a  lady,  not  to 
see?  Had  she  and  Millicent  and  the  first  Mrs.  Ritten- 
house  simply  been  putting  off  these  things  on  women 
like  Rose  Matlock? 

But  what  sort  of  things? 

So  far  the  personal  situation  between  Adam  and  the 
other  woman  had  scarcely  taken  hold  of  Neith's  imag 
ination.  Hers  was  the  least  jealous  of  temperaments, 
and  the  range  of  her  experience  in  the  sort  of  things  that 
might  go  on  between  people  like  Adam  and  Rose  Mat- 
lock  was  slight.  Intimations  of  the  situation,  like  stars 
that  follow  on  a  blow,  swam  in  the  blackness  of  her 
mind.  She  would  find  herself  dropping  off  into  stupors 
of  exhaustion  and  reviving  to  have  the  whole  horizon  of 
her  engagement  lit  by  new  coruscations.  Toward  the 
small  hours  they  all  sifted  out  to  the  one  blinding  fact 
that  whatever  had  transpired  between  Adam  and  Rose, 
it  had  all  taken  place  in  that  sacred  interval  in  which 
she  had  believed  herself  defended  from  lesser  loves  by 
the  flaming  sword  of  his  secret  devotion  to  herself. 

§58 

It  was  the  cold  morning  summary  of  the  night's  rest 
less  gleaning  that  gave  her  the  first  taste  of  Eustace  Rit- 
tenhouse's  characterization,  "their  own  kind  of  bunk," 
for  the  essential  differences  in  point  of  view  between 
herself  and  the  Radical  group.  And  though  she  was 
hardly  conscious  of  it  until  she  found  Fleeta  Spence  at 


294  NO.  26  JAYNE  STREET 

Sadie's,  it  was  with  the  purpose  of  defining  the  quality 
of  that  "bunk"  to  herself,  that  she  had  come. 

At  the  time  Eustace  had  committed  himself  to  this  dis 
crimination  in  the  varieties  of  Radical  profession,  Fleeta's 
would  have  been  the  first  name  that  occurred  to  her. 

Fleeta's  bobbed  hair,  her  purple  and  orange  furnish 
ings,  her  trepidations  over  the  question  as  to  whether 
sandals  were  a  sufficiently  "Radical"  departure  to  war 
rant  their  adoption  in  the  face  of  certain  marked  incon 
veniences,  had  always  appealed  to  her  as  rendered  a 
little  less  than  ridiculous  by  Fleeta's  own  sweetness  of 
disposition.  She  saw  them,  in  the  light  of  her  own  over 
throw  in  the  very  citadel  of  Social  Revolution,  as  a  sin 
cere  extension  of  Fleeta's  beliefs  to  the  only  field  over 
which  she  had  any  absolute  control,  Fleeta's  own  per 
sonal  behavior.  Sadie,  too!  There  was  her  black  dress 
and  her  rickety,  illegitimate  child  as  the  witness  of  how 
much  out  of  her  own  meager  allotment  of  life,  she  was 
willing  to  pay  down  for  her  participation  in  a  cause 
which  had  never  looked  nearer  to  defeat.  And  in  both 
these  young  women,  occupied  with  the  deletion  from 
the  list  of  prisoners  for  opinion's  sake  of  those  names 
which  could  not  be  tactfully  presented  to  the  patron 
age  of  Mrs.  Carteret  Keys,  there  was  a  sharpness  of  dis 
crimination  that  forbade  her  to  dismiss  them  as  mere 
witless  enthusiasts  of  change. 

If  there  was  any  reality  in  their  "Movement"  beside 
the  hard  demand  for  fewer  hours'  work  and  more  wages 
for  them,  it  must  be  the  sort  of  reality  Adam  Frear 


NO.  26  JAYNE  STREET  295 

stood  for.  If  there  was  any  "bunk"  it  would  be  "bunk" 
that  was  common  to  the  whole  profession  of  Radical 
ism.  Neith  sat  on  Sadie's  bed  and  pretended  to  amuse 
the  baby,  swinging  her  watch  just  out  of  reach  of  its 
curled,  skinny,  little  claws,  and  answered  to  the  best  of 
her  ability  when  she  was  appealed  to  as  a  more  intimate 
exponent  of  the  idiosyncrasies  of  Mrs.  Carteret  Keys 
and  her  kind. 

No,  certainly,  Mrs.  Keys  would  n't  admit  Bovard; 
was  n't  he,  if  not  convicted  as  a  dynamiter,  at  least  only 
escaping  conviction  by  a  fluke?  No,  not  Goldman,  you 
might  know  that!  Nor  that  Professor  Townly;  well,  he 
had  deserted  his  wife  and  the  poor  thing  had  nearly  died 
of  it  ... 

Oh,  yes,  Gifford  .  .  . 

"What  does  Adam  Frear  think  of  Gifford's  case?" 

It  was  Fleeta  who  asked,  but  it  flashed  on  Neith  with 
cold  intimations  of  horror  that  in  just  such  fashion, 
with  the  same  suggestion  of  intimate  knowledge,  she 
had  heard  Adam  questioned  as  to  what  Rose  Matlock 
thought.  Were  these  things,  then,  the  subject  of  common 
talk,  of  common  assurance?  At  the  mere  flutter  of  such  a 
suggestion  below  her  consciousness,  Neith  abandoned  her 
earlier  purpose  to  put  her  case  hypothetically  to  Sadie. 

"Oh,  he  thinks  it  an  inexcusable  use  of  authority  in 
the  interest  of  a  popular  prejudice."  She  found  herself 
answering  Fleeta's  question.  "He  thinks  it  shocking 
bad  manners  on  our  part  not  to  be  willing  to  hear  what 
a  man  like  Gifford  has  to  say,  simply  because  we  don't 


296  NO.  26  JAYNE  STREET 

like  it."  As  a  matter  of  fact,  Adam  had  made  use  of  no 
such  term.  It  had  spurted  up  from  Neith's  own  depths 
as  though  it  had  been  waiting  its  chance  to  offer  itself  as 
a  bridge  to  her  own  conclusions. 

"I  think  you'll  find  that's  the  way  Mrs.  Keys  feels 
about  a  lot  of  those  people."  She  indicated  the  deleted 
list  in  Fleeta's  hand.  "She  won't  stand  for  them  because 
they  have  done  things  that  are  —  that  are  disloyal  to 
all  our  experience  about  the  best  way  of  doing  things. 
We  have  n't  learned  much  about  how  to  live  decently. 
Still,  all  we  have  has  been  learned  at  the  cost  of  some 
body  or  other,  and  we  throw  them  away  when  we  throw 
away  what  they  have  learned.  It's  a  frightfully  under 
bred  thing  for  us  to  shut  Gifford  up  in  prison  for  saying 
what  we  don't  want  to  hear,  but  it  was  just  as  bad  for 
Townly  to  bring  all  that  humiliation  on  the  mother  of 
his  children." 

"But  when  you  think  of  all  he  did  for  the  cause! 
Don't  you  think  that  outweighs  all  those  little  indi 
vidual  moralities?" 

"Ah,  but  I  thought  that  was  the  cause!  Not  to  bring 
on  anybody  a  set  of  conditions  in  which  he  or  she  had  n't 
the  full  equality  of  decision." 

Neith  perceived  that,  after  all,  she  had  stated  the 
case  for  Rose  Matlock. 

"But,  Miss  Schuyler,  this  is  the  age  of  group  action, 
of  group  psychology,"  Fleeta  glibly  recited;  "we  can't 
lose  sight  of  the  great  movement  in  the  interest  of  the 
individual  case." 


NO.  26  JAYNE  STREET  297 

Sadie  was  as  much  nearer  the  marrow  of  the  question 
as  the  length  of  her  personal  sorrow.  "People  do  scab 
awfully  on  each  other,  Miss  Schuyler." 

"Scab?  Yes.  You'll  find  that  Mrs.  Keys  and  a  few 
others  of  us  look  on  men  like  Townly,  as  scabs  against 
the  Cause  of  Personal  Democracy.  You  remember  what 
Rose  Matlock  said"  —  she  appealed  to  Fleeta  —  "'We 
have  wars  like  this  because  we  are  forever  at  war  in  our 
most  sacred  relations  — '"  She  broke  off  to  follow  the 
track  of  her  secret  thought.  Was  the  war  now  on  be 
tween  those  two,  Adam  and  Rose?  The  two  young  ad 
vocates  of  the  Revolution  watched  her  as  she  absently 
swung  the  golden  gleam  just  out  of  reach  of  the  ineffec 
tual  hands. 

"There's  an  awful  lot  of  scab  women,"  Sadie  vaguely 
contributed. 

Fleeta  swept  the  whole  subject  off  the  board.  "We've 
got  to  remember  that  the  Espionage  Act  is  a  purely 
Capitalistic  move  — " 

§59 

The  sensation  of  having  reached  after  reality  and 
grasped  only  a  handful  of  cotton  wool,  in  which  Neith's 
visit  to  Delancey  Street  had  ended,  was  all  the  more 
trying  because  she  could  not  correct  it  as  she  had  other 
frustrations  of  her  search  after  the  American  idea,  by 
resort  to  Rose  Matlock  or  Adam  Frear.  In  a  general 
way  she  had  understood  that  both  of  them  were  com 
mitted  to  a  programme  of  change  in  which  property 


298  NO.  26  JAYNE  STREET 

should  become  the  charge  of  those  who  created  it,  the 
arts  forwarded  by  those  who  practiced  them,  and  ideals 
fostered  by  those  who  gave  them  birth. 

In  a  general  way  also,  she  had  understood  that  this 
was  to  be  brought  about  by  the  shift  of  group  conscious 
ness,  a  playing  of  the  wind  of  public  opinion  in  new  di 
rections  against  the  sails  of  the  social  enterprise.  But  it 
had  never  occurred  to  her  that  this  could  come  about 
and  yet  leave  the  whole  field  of  personal  relations  open 
to  the  lusts  and  reprisals  which  she  understood  played 
now  in  that  open  ground  between  the  creation  and 
distribution  of  wealth.  It  was  in  this  latter  field  that 
Bruce  Havens  exercised  his  remarkable  talent  for  profit- 
breeding.  As  she  daily  learned  through  her  work  with 
Mrs.  Kendries,  it  was  to  keep  open  the  whole  of  that 
region  in  the  field  of  food,  of  steel,  of  lumber,  and  mu 
nitions,  to  future  raids,  reprisals,  and  piracies,  that  the 
business  of  seeing  America  through  the  war  was  being 
manipulated.  The  war  was  to  be  won,  but  nothing  was 
to  be  done  in  the  winning  which  would  operate  against 
the  free  return  to  the  old  autocracy  of  the  "business 


sense." 


Now  it  seemed  to  her  that  what  Adam  Frear  and  his 
friends  looked  forward  to,  was  the  mere  shift  of  the  ac 
cent  of  autocracy.  In  the  region  of  his  personal  rela 
tions,  Adam  himself  appeared  the  autocrat,  as  instinc 
tively  and  with  something  of  the  same  reaction  into 
irritability  that  Bruce  Havens  had  exhibited  with  Mrs. 
Kendries. 


NO.  26  JAYNE  STREET  299 

Nothing  so  concrete  as  this  had  come  out  of  Neith's 
numbed  attempts  to  square  herself  with  the  situation. 
All  she  was  aware  of  was  the  pervasion  of  all  her 
thoughts  of  one  phase  of  it  with  all  her  encounters  with 
the  other.  Adam  came  to  take  her  to  dinner  the  next 
evening,  but  constraint  sat  visibly  with  them  at  the 
table.  Barbed  differences  ambushed  in  all  their  talk,  and 
pitfalls  opened  at  every  step  along  those  once  shining 
paths  in  the  direction  of  Adam's  main  interest.  Opened 
at  least,  for  Neith.  For  she  saw,  as  the  evening  pro 
gressed,  that  except  for  the  irritated  consciousness  of 
her  finding  such  reminders  under  foot,  he  would  have 
cleared  them  unsuspected.  He  read  perversity  into  the 
ever-present  alignment  in  her  mind  of  their  situation 
with  Society's.  Once  or  twice  it  even  flashed  out  at  her 
as  a  suspicion  of  collusion  between  herself  and  Miss 
Matlock. 

It  was  after  one  such  burst  —  they  had  come  back  to 
Jayne  Street  after  deciding  to  go  to  a  play  and  then 
finding  nothing  which  suited  their  mood  —  that  Adam 
grasped  the  situation  almost  with  sternness.  With  an 
air,  indeed,  of  finding  himself  the  surprised,  the  injured 
party. 

"When  you  say  things  like  that  — "  he  had  begun. 

What  she  had  said  was  in  reference  to  the  new  turn  of 
affairs  in  Russia  in  which  he  was  inordinately  interested, 
to  the  effect  that  she  thought  the  measure  of  success 
of  the  Bolshevist  movement  would  be  the  success  they 
might  already  have  had  in  the  performance  of  justice 


300  NO.  26  JAYNE  STREET 

and  equity  among  themselves.  She  had  said  it  out  of  her 
own  deep  preoccupation  and  without  any  undercurrent, 
but  Adam  had  stopped  his  pacing  up  and  down  her 
small  room  and  stared  at  her  with  a  touch  of  resentment. 

"When  you  say  things  like  that,  I  begin  to  wonder  if 
there  has  n't  been  a  mistake  made  somewhere." 

"A  mistake?" 

"A  mistake  in  your  understanding  of  the  things  I  am 
interested  in,  in  the  things  that  I  am.  If  it  is  going  to  be 
like  this,  if  you  are  going  to  find  yourself  put  out  of 
sympathy  with  my  work  simply  because  you  have  dis 
covered  that  I  have  been  interested  in  other  women  — 
in  another  woman  — " 

"Not  just  the  fact,  Adam.  Of  course  it  is  a  blow  to 
me.  I  have  n't  been  — "  There  was  no  way  in  which  she 
could  make  it  plain  to  him  how  difficult  the  whole  sub 
ject  was  to  her,  over  what  hot  ploughshares  of  violated 
reticences  she  moved.  "Not  the  relation,  Adam,  but  the 
—  the  excuse  for  it,  the  quality  of  her  relation  to  you. 
That  is  what  matters." 

As  once  before  he  frankly  stared,  bewilderment  as 
suaging  his  impatience  with  her. 

"Her  relation  to  me?  Why  what  relation  can  she  have, 
if  I  won't  have  her?" 

"It  is  not  possible  for  me  to  believe,  Adam,  that  a 
woman  like  Rose  Matlock  can  have  any  relation  that 
can  be  disposed  of  as  simply  as  your  saying  that  you 
won't  have  her.  I  have  not  gathered  from  anything  that 
has  been  said  that  she  asked  you  to  'have  her.'" 


NO.  26  JAYNE  STREET  301 

"Look  here!"  he  said;  "y°u  said  yourself,  when  we 
were  talking  about  the  Leninskys,  that  you  did  n't  value 
the  ceremony  in  marriage." 

"If  I  didn't,  it  is  because  I  value  the  marriage  so 
much." 

"Well,  I  have  already  told  you  that  is  over.  I  told  her 
so  weeks  before  we  were  engaged.  Just  before  I  went 
West  the  last  time,  to  be  exact.  What  more  do  you 
want?" 

"You  just  .  .  .  'told'  her.  Just  like  that?" 

"Well,  if  those  things  have  to  be  done,  they  had  bet 
ter  be  done  quickly." 

"Adam,  you  can't  mean  that!  That  you  just  .  .  .  told 
her.  Not,  at  least,  until  you  had  made  every  possible 
effort  to  protect  her  from  —  whatever  it  was  in  your 
self  that  made  you  fail  her.  Not  until  you  had  given 
her  every  possible  chance  to  help  you  .  .  .  Adam,  you 
could  n't  have  done  that!" 

It  was  impossible  for  him  to  conceal  that  this  was  so 
new  a  view  to  him,  so  little  thought  about,  that  his  sur 
face  response  to  it  was  a  wave  of  guilty  compunction. 

"I  talked  it  over  with  a  woman  I  knew  — " 

"You  mean  —  you  talked  "  —  the  words  wore  heavily 
through  the  strained  numbness  of  her  understanding  — 
"you  talked  of  it  ...  with  another  woman,  before  you 
talked  with  her?" 

"Ah"  —  he  turned  sullen  —  "it  is  n't  so  easy  to  tell 
a  woman  you  are  done  with  her."  His  face,  his  very  eyes, 
were  pale,  he  breathed  heavily. 


302  NO.  26  JAYNE  STREET 

"  I  know,  Adam.  It  is  n't  easy  even  to  talk  of  it.  But  I 
must  know.  I  must  know  why  she  refused  to  release  you. 
A  woman  like  that  must  have  a  good  reason  for  refus- 
ing-" 

"Refuse?  Release?"  Anger  belched  from  him  at  last. 
"There  was  n't  any  question  of  release!  I  tell  you  I  was 
done  with  her!" 

"Adam!  I  think  you  have  behaved  abominably!  Oh, 
abominably ! " 

As  if  the  interview  had  reached  its  exploding  point,  it 
was  followed  by  a  long  silence  in  which  they  surveyed 
from  their  several  points  of  view  the  fragments  of  their 
own  relation  scattered  on  the  scene  of  their  late  hap 
piness. 

It  was  the  woman  who  spoke  first  with  the  last  flicker 
of  expiring  tension,  as  she  turned  back  from  the  fire 
where  she  mechanically  warmed  herself.  "I  think  you 
would  have  done  better  to  give  me  that  letter,  Adam.  I 
think  she  would  have  put  it  better  than  that." 

"The  letter?" 

"The  one  Miss  Matlock  gave  you  for  me." 

He  deeply  and  inexplicably  reddened.  "It's  burnt." 
He  moved  over  beside  her  and,  with  a  real  touch  of  hu 
mility,  began:  "I  want  you  to  believe  that  I  was  sorry 
she  had  to  be  hurt.  But  these  things  can't  be  helped. 
They  happen  every  day.  A  man  can't  help  what  he 
feels." 

It  had  been  impossible  for  her  not  to  be  moved  at  the 
old  persuasive  inflection  of  gentleness  in  his  first  note  of 


NO.  26  JAYNE  STREET  303 

self-reproach.  Equally  impossible  to  say  by  what  insen 
sible  and  swift  degrees  that  softness  had  passed  the 
mark  at  which  it  stood  for  the  gentleness  of  a  full  nature 
ripened  by  experience,  and  took  on  the  incipience  of  de 
cay.  Somewhere  in  the  passage  of  those  few  short  sen 
tences  something  had  occurred  that  lifted  the  nostril 
and  set  the  note  of  faint  irreconcilable  horror  between 
him  and  his  fiancee.  She  gave  forth  a  low  cry  of  mingled 
pain  and  protest,  which  brought  him,  in  a  more  self- 
forgetful  frame  than  he  had  yet  shown,  directly  to  her 
side. 

"My  dear  —  if  you  could  just  make  me  understand 
what  it  is  I  say  that  gives  you  so  much  distress." 

"Why,  just  that,  Adam;  that  you  think  things  we  do 
ourselves  can't  be  helped."  She  slipped  free  of  the  caress 
that  would  have  muffled  her  sharpened  perceptions  in 
the  renewal  of  their  effect  each  upon  the  other. 

"It's  what  I  came  to  America  for,  Adam.  It's  what 
the  whole  world  is  looking  to  America  for,  the  ability  to 
act  on  the  intrinsic  merits  of  a  situation,  independently 
of  its  emotions.  It's  the  whole  hope  of  the  world  and 
almost  its  only  faith  that  there  is  a  point  beyond  the 
upsetting  of  passion  and  prejudice,  at  which  we  can 
act." 

"Yes,"  he  agreed,  "only  I  don't  see  exactly  what  that 
has  to  do  with  the  present  case." 

She  looked  at  him  frankly  now,  and  almost  imperson 
ally  for  a  longish  interval. 

"Somehow,  Adam,  I  think  you  really  don't." 


1 


304  NO.  26  JAYNE  STREET 

"Well,  then,  can't  you  show  me?" 

She  considered.  "I  don't  know,  Adam,  myself,  ex 
actly,  but  I  might  help  you  to  find  out." 

"Ah,  do,  then." 

"I  can't  while  I'm  engaged  to  you,  Adam."  She  took 
off  her  ring.  She  had  the  impulse  to  give  it  back,  but  she 
saw  that  he  had  not  noted  her  movement.  He  would 
perhaps  consider  such  an  act  on  her  part  melodramatic. 
She  laid  the  ring  unobtrusively  on  the  mantelpiece. 
"Our  engagement  would  have  to  be  —  suspended." 

"Only  suspended?"  There  was  a  hint  of  real  anxiety 
in  his  voice  that  lightened  hers  as  she  responded. 

"Just  —  suspended.  Until  I  can  find  out?" 

XIX 

§60 

BEHIND  Neith's  suspension  of  her  engagement  there  had 
been  that  instinct  for  the  higher  form  of  democracy 
which  is  called  breeding;  not  to  go  to  Rose  Matlock  on 
behalf  of  Rose's  own  claim  with  any  appearance  of 
stooping.  Her  removal  of  the  ring  had  been  an  immedi 
ate  and  concrete  way  of  renouncing  on  her  own  behalf 
any  strategic  advantage  of  Adam's  favor.  She  did  not 
know  exactly  what  was  to  come,  for  her,  out  of  a  situa 
tion  so  strange  to  all  her  traditions,  but  she  had  the  clean 
Anglo-Saxon  sporting  instinct  to  throw  away  her  sword 
in  the  presence  of  an  unarmed  adversary.  She  could  not 
present  herself  as  Adam's  fiancee  before  a  woman  so 


NO.  26  JAYNE  STREET  305 

stripped  as  Rose  Matlock  was  by  the  defection  of  her 
lover. 

Moreover,  she  was  warned  by  some  deeper  divination 
than  her  experience  gave  her  title  to,  that  a  right  more 
fundamental  than  favor  was  at  stake  here.  She  felt  it 
rise  against  the  Van  Droom-Schuyler  inheritance  which 
was  at  work  in  her,  in  sly  and  secret  ways,  to  overthrow 
Rose's  claim  with  contempt.  It  made  the  background 
against  which  Adam's  own  disposition  to  make  his  favor 
the  sole  criterion  of  any  claim  whatever,  look  more  un 
lovely  in  every  new  light  in  which  it  showed  itself. 

And  no  sooner  had  she  committed  herself  to  even  this 
slight  formality  of  separation  than  she  began  to  see  her 
self  possessed  of  that  same  urgency  to  "know"  which 
had  obsessed  Rose  Matlock. 

She  had  recoiled  from  Adam's  profession  of  helpless 
ness  the  full  length  of  her  instinctive  woman's  notion  of 
love  as  a  vocation,  which  all  the  years  of  one's  life  are 
scarcely  sufficient  to  perfect.  But  the  item  which  drove 
her  farthest  along  that  track,  was  one  she  had  done  her 
best  not  to  notice  even  to  herself.  It  was  that,  in  the 
half-hour  that  had  remained  to  her  of  the  evening's  en 
gagement,  she  had  sensed  in  Adam's  own  willingness  to 
be  blown  upon  by  inclination,  to  be  played  and  handled, 
to  make  his  reaction  to  her  skill  in  handling  the  sole  test 
of  the  validity  of  their  engagement,  a  touch  of  the  fatu 
ity  which  belonged  to  her  impressions  of  General  Eustace 
Rittenhouse.  Of  all  that  she  remembered  or  divined 
of  the  reasons  that  had  driven  the  second  Mrs.  Ritten- 


306  NO.  26  JAYNE  STREET 

house  from  his  side,  the  most  sickening  had  been  the  old 
General's  own  pride  in  his  complete  befuddlement  at 
the  hands  of  a  popular  dancer.  It  had  struck  her  that 
there  was  a  touch  of  the  same  fatuousness  in  Adam's 
own  confession  of  not  being  able  to  help  what  he  felt 
about  a  woman. 

For  the  moment,  the  convention  of  breaking  her  en 
gagement  had  served  to  bring  the  situation  its  needed 
touch  of  reality.  It  became  a  circumscribed  point  from 
which  to  measure  and  adjust  the  divergences  of  view 
that  began  to  show  themselves  between  herself  and 
Adam.  It  had  always  been  perfectly  clear  to  her,  and  it 
was  with  astonishment  she  began  to  understand  that  it 
was  not  equally  clear  to  Adam,  that  marriage  must  take 
its  measure  from  something  more  stable  than  the  mere 
legality.  If  one  was  to  regard  it,  as  by  all  her  training 
and  tradition  she  now  found  that  she  had,  as  the  point 
beyond  which  the  real  exploration  of  personal  life  began, 
it  must  be  a  fixed  point.  And  because  she  was  not  quite 
willing  to  face  the  possibility  of  Adam's  finding  it  noth 
ing  more  stable  than  the  sum  of  their  mutual  reac 
tions,  she  fled  all  the  more  readily  to  the  high  ground 
of  leaving  the  whole  situation  open  to  Rose  Matlock's 
claim. 

And  immediately  she  discovered  that  she  did  not 
know  how  to  so  present  the  case  to  Miss  Matlock  with 
out  offense.  To  begin  with,  she  did  not  know  her  ad 
dress.  And  because  of  her  own  too  fine  reticences,  she 
did  not  know  what  new  angle  the  situation  might  have 


NO.  26  JAYNE  STREET  307 

taken  between  Rose  and  Adam  since  that  day  at  her 
house. 

She  wrote  a  note  or  two  and  destroyed  them.  She  con 
sidered  the  feasibility  of  asking  Adam  to  take  her  to  call. 
Then  the  power  that  intervenes  to  bring  the  subject 
of  our  concentrated  cogitations  across  the  field  of  view 
brought  her  in  touch  with  Rose  at  one  of  those  magnifi 
cent  and  half -public  houses  of  the  rich  that  face  Central 
Park  across  the  upper  stretch  of  the  Avenue.  The  place 
had  been  thrown  open  by  its  owner  for  the  reception 
of  certain  French  Commissioners.  By  virtue  of  their 
own  position  near  the  top  of  the  host's  visiting  list,  the 
Schuyler-Doremases  had  cards. 

It  was  the  last  place  in  the  world  to  which  Rose  Mat- 
lock,  who  was  neither  rich  nor  a  New  Yorker,  would 
have  been  invited.  But  at  the  last  moment,  by  one  of 
those  accidents  that  were  the  despair  of  publicity-loving 
feminists,  Rose  turned  up  in  deep  and  intimate  converse 
with  one  of  the  Commissioners.  One  never  knew  how 
Rose  managed  those  things.  She  was  n't  on  lists  and  she 
did  n't  come  in  the  gracious  train  of  any  of  the  successful 
aspirants,  but  there,  at  the  fruitful  center  of  too  many 
auspicious  occasions,  she  could  be  found,  magnificently 
unaware  of  having  usurped  the  place  of  much  more 
eminent  and  representative  American  ladies.  And  your 
good  manners  forbade  you  from  just  breaking  in  and 
letting  the  Commissioner  know  that  the  Middle  West 
was  not  America,  and  that  there  really  was  something 
you  could  call  Society  in  New  York, 


308  NO.  26  JAYNE  STREET 

It  was  not  until  the  interval  allotted  for  refreshments 
that  the  infatuated  Commissioner,  who  was  hearing  for 
the  first  time  of  the  Non-Partisan  League,  surrendered 
Miss  Matlock  to  that  oblivion  to  which  Fifth  Avenue 
was  born  to  consign  her.  Neith  found  her  in  the  library 
sitting  detached  but  not  unobservant,  and  brought  her  a 
cup  of  tea.  It  seemed  for  the  moment  as  if  she  had  not 
remembered  who  Miss  Schuyler  was.  As  she  sat,  the 
shadow  of  her  great  perplexity  drew  slowly  over  her. 
Neith  spoke  at  last  before  she  was  utterly  engulfed  by  it. 

"I  have  been  wanting  to  talk  with  you,"  she  said.  "I 
have  not  known  where  I  could  find  you."  She  did  not  say 
that  she  shrank  from  inviting  Rose  Matlock  to  Jayne 
Street  almost  as  much  as  from  calling  on  Rose  at  her 
own  house.  She  wanted  a  more  impersonal  background 
for  what  was  to  pass  between  them.  As  she  looked  at 
Rose  Matlock's  pale,  slightly  abstracted  face,  she  di 
vined  that  the  situation  was  as  foreign  to  the  other 
woman's  traditions,  to  her  faiths,  as  it  was  to  the  Van 
Droom-Schuylers.  She  felt  she  would  not  be  able  to  talk 
to  Rose  unless  they  could  get  away  into  some  large,  new 
place  that  would  not  listen.  What  they  had  to  say  to  one 
another  was  something  that  even  the  traditions  should 
not  overhear. 

Rose  Matlock  looked  at  her  watch.  "We  could  go 
now,"  she  said.  She  put  down  the  untasted  tea. 

When  they  came  out  of  the  door  together,  a  light  snow 
was  sifting  along  the  Avenue  and  drawing  veils  across 
the  Park;  it  swept  like  a  curtain  about  the  great  bulk  of 


NO.  26  JAYNE  STREET  309 

the  Metropolitan  Museum,  a  square  or  so  farther  up 
the  Avenue.  "It's  artist  day  at  the  Museum,"  Rose 
said.  "There'll  be  hardly  anybody  there."  She  led  the 
way,  by  a  side  entrance,  to  a  room  stark  with  the  pale 
stone  of  the  archaic  Greek  period.  There  was  nothing 
there  that,  if  it  could  have  overheard,  would  have  cared. 

"I  want  to  tell  you,"  Neith  began,  "that  I  am  not 
engaged  to  Adam  Frear  any  more.  That  I  could  n't  be 
so  long  as  there  was  an  unsatisfied  claim  ..." 

"You  think,  then,  that  I  have  a  claim." 

"I  think  you  have  been  treated  abominably.  I  told 
him  so." 

"My  dear  Miss  Schuyler"  —  the  older  woman  was 
sharp  —  "there  is  more  in  this  than  the  how  of  Adam's 
treating  me.  I  could  forgive  that!  I  told  you  I  had  n't 
any  prejudice  in  favor  of  special  emotions.  I  could  for 
give  his  tempers.  I  could  forgive  his  brutalities,  even.  I 
could  forgive,  I  think,  his  not  being  able  to  go  on  loving 
me."  She  stopped  for  the  recovery  of  that  command 
over  herself  which  threatened,  from  point  to  point  of  her 
rehearsed  anguish,  to  slip  away. 

"What  I  can't  forgive,"  she  said  at  last,  seeing  that 
Miss  Schuyler  said  nothing,  "is  his  interference  with 
my  prerogative  of  loving  him."  After  this  so  amazing 
statement  of  her  position,  they  were  both  silent  while 
the  strolling  guard  went  by. 

"You  haven't  made  him  see  that,"  Neith  ventured 
at  last. 

"No.  It  was  part  of  the  shock  I  have  suffered  that  he 


310  NO.  26  JAYNE  STREET 

had  to  be  made  to  see.  That  it  did  n't  naturally  and  un 
affectedly  occur  to  him  that  I  had  prerogatives. 

"I  don't  know  how  much  he  has  told  you,"  she  began 
again,  "but  you  must  know  yourself  that  there  was 
nothing  in  my  life  or  in  my  work  that  would  have  per 
mitted  him  to  think  that  I  would  take  such  a  situation 
lightly." 

"Oh,  no!" 

"It  was  as  explicitly  put  between  us  as  such  things 
can  be,  that  if  I  esteemed  the  conventions  lightly  it  was 
only  because  I  attached  the  more  importance  to  the  re 
lation  itself.  You  can  judge,  then,  of  my  amazement,  of 
my  utter  confusion,  to  have  him  treat  my  attitude  and 
my  part  in  the  arrangement  as  a  mere  silken  scarf  to  his, 
something  to  be  folded  up  and  laid  away  when  he  was 
tired  of  it.  What  he  can't  forgive  in  me,  what  he  has 
punished  me  for  up  to  the  limit  of  his  capacity  of  such  a 
situation  to  punish  the  one  faithful  to  it,  is  for  insisting 
that  the  freedom  he  insists  on  for  himself  implies  an 
equal  freedom  on  my  part  for  going  on  with  —  whatever 
was  going  on  in  me.  And  for  demanding  the  same  con 
sideration  for  it  that  he  expects  for  himself." 

"He  does  n't  see  that;  he  does  n't  see  it  in  the  least." 

"Well,  then,  what  does  he  see?" 

"Nothing,  as  we  see  it,"  Neith  felt  certain.  "I  think 
he  is  shocked,  too.  He  is  shocked  at  your  coming  to 
me.  Shocked,"  she  hastened  to  add  in  a  sudden  flash  of 
illumination,  "in  the  same  way  the  stockholders  were 
shocked  by  the  strike  at  Marcy," 


NO.  26  JAYNE  STREET  311 

Miss  Matlock  threw  her  a  wry  smile  of  appreciation, 
which  ended  almost  in  the  twist  of  pain. 

"Ah,  if  you  can  see  it  like  that!  If  it  is  like  that  with 
him,  then  where  does  it  leave  —  all  of  us?" 

"I  can  tell  you  where  it  leaves  me,"  Neith  came  out 
magnificently  —  "on  your  side.  Absolutely!  I  don't 
know  what  you  want  him  to  do,"  she  said.  "But  I  can 
understand  that  that  is  a  smaller  consideration  besides 
his  just  seeing  and  admitting  that  you  had  a  —  a  share 
in  the  corporation."  She  drew  her  figure  from  the  last 
that  had  been  in  her  mind. 

"Oh,  I  told  him  what  he  could  do!  There  was  only  one 
thing  to  do;  it  was  to  sweep  away  all  the  false  starts,  the 
mistakes  and  misunderstandings  and  begin  again.  Where 
we  were.  It  was  the  only  chance  we  had  of  bringing  the 
thing  out  right.  If  I  would  n't  accept  a  solution  based 
on  the  idea  that  the  situation  was  his,  to  be  disposed  of 
in  view  of  his  sole  attitude,  then  the  only  thing  to  do 
was  to  find  one  that  would  include  us  both.  Include  the 
fact  that  I  could  n't,  that  I  don't  wish  to  change,  as 
equal  to  his  own  demand  for  change." 

"Don't  tell  me  he  refused  that!  It  was  the  simplest 
justice." 

"It  was  worse  than  a  refusal.  He  was  afraid!" 

"But,  afraid!  Of  what?" 

"Of  justice!" 

They  looked  at  one  another,  their  faces  colorless  al 
most  as  the  stone  faces  from  Cyprus  and  Ionia. 

"He  was  afraid,"  said  Rose  Matlock,  "of  the  living- 


NO.  26  JAYNE  STREET 

ness  of  Democracy !  Lived,  I  mean,  in  terms  of  personal 
behavior." 

"Oh!"  said  Neith. 

She  was  afraid  herself,  afraid  of  the  tremendous  sim 
plicity  and  directness  of  this  woman  beside  her.  It  was  a 
simplicity  as  stark  and  compelling  as  that  of  the  Attic 
statues.  Far  back  in  one  of  those  shut  compartments  of 
the  mind,  from  which  she  was  later  to  take  it  out  for 
conscious  consideration,  she  had  an  instant's  apprecia 
tion  of  man's  need  to  dress  up  the  essential  figure  of 
femininity,  reduced  as  it  was  in  Rose  Matlock  to  two 
or  three  masterly  lines,  in  their  own  wavering  and 
infinite  complexities. 

"He  must  do  you  justice,"  she  said  at  last.  They  got 
up  by  common  consent  as  a  party  passed  through  the 
room,  and  moved  toward  a  window  overlooking  the 
veiled  park.  Behind  them  in  the  vast  storehouse  of  art, 
they  heard  the  voice  of  the  guard  clanging  the  hour  for 
closing:  "All  out!  All  out!"  As  they  moved  mechani 
cally  toward  the  door  by  which  they  had  entered,  Rose 
Matlock  spoke  hurriedly  and  with  that  subdued  energy 
which  was  the  note  of  her  whole  personality. 

"There  are  times,"  she  said,  "when  the  personal  side 
of  this  confuses  my  mind;  when  I  suffer  so  much  in  find 
ing  myself  here  in  a  situation  which  denies  all  my  con 
victions  that  I  lose  the  sense  of  clearness.  But  I  want 
you  to  believe  that  at  all  times  there  is  the  necessity  for 
me,  for  my  work,  to  know  what  this  signifies.  If  I  am 
\  not  to  have  anything  but  my  work,  I  must  know  when  I 


acy 
?Is 


NO.  26  JAYNE  STREET  313 

work  for  democracy  in  the  control  of  wealth,  of  indus 
try,  whether  it  is  Democracy  I  am  working  for,  or  a 
mere  change  of  autocrats.  I  must  know,"  she  insisted, 
"whether  men  as  men,  are  capable  of  Democracy.  This 
new  change  which  has  come  in  Russia,  these  Bolshevists 
.  .  .  the  groups  that  in  America  are  clamoring  for  demo 
cratic  control.  They  have  never  had  it.  Is  Democracy 
just  a  name,  just  a  new  cover  for  the  wish  to  control? 
it  like  the  new  names  of  Freedom  which  they  give  to  — 
to  experiences  like  mine,  for  an  old,  a  very  old  autoc 
racy?  .  .  .  Free  Speech  ..."  she  said.  "I  haven't  had 
it.  Do  you  remember  what  Adam  said  to  me  that  day  in 
your  rooms?  If  I  'dared'  .  .  .!" 

They  came  out  together  into  the  cold  gloaming 
through  which  still  sifted  errant  flakes  of  snow.  To 
Neith  it  was  as  if  the  interview  itself  had  landed  them 
there,  in  some  sunless  region  unwarmed  by  any  of  the 
fine  resolves  which  had  lighted  her  way  to  it.  She 
breasted  the  cold  blast  desperately. 

"You  shall  have,"  she  said,  "with  me!  You  shall  have 
Free  Speech  and  Justice!" 

Rose  Matlock  turned  on  her.  "Have  you  realized," 
she  said,  "that  Justice,  if  we  are  to  call  it  that,  can  only 
come  of  the  clean  desire  to  be  just?  I  don't  want,  I  can't 
accept,  a  set  of  sentimental  postures  of  Justice,  moti 
vated  by  Adam's  wish  to  reinstate  himself  in  your  favor. 
Adam  can  be  made  to  do  anything  if  you  handle  him 
right.  There  was  a  time,  shortly  after  his  return  from 
the  West,  between  that  and  his  going  to  Russia,  when 


314  NO.  26  JAYNE  STREET 

I  could  have  played  him  back,  temporarily,  at  least, 
where  he  would  have  done  anything  I  liked  because  I 
would  have  made  him  like  it.  I  loved  him  too  well  for 
that!" 

Suddenly  Neith  was  glad  of  the  dusk  and  the  snow. 
All  the  old  reticences  of  sex,  Aunt  Emmy's  foolish  pro 
prieties,  even,  took  another  front  to  her.  It  was  n't  de 
cent  that  a  woman  should  have  been  whipped  to  the 
point  when  this  laying  bare  of  her  stripes  was  a  lesser 
pain.  If  women  were  ashamed  to  tell  how  men  treated 
them,  it  must  be  because  of  the  deeper  shame  of  their 
never  having  been  able  to  teach  men  how  not  to  treat 
them  in  such  fashion. 

If  Rose  Matlock  was  n't  ashamed,  it  was  because  she 
had  found  the  way. 

"And  if  I  did  n't  want  a  reaction  which  was  the  mere 
result  of  his  being  played  upon  by  my  own  not  quite 
superseded  charm,  you  can  guess  how  much  less  I  want 
a  'justice'  which  is  the  reaction  to  your  charm,"  Miss 
Matlock  had  finished. 

"Ah,  then,"  in  a  voice  whose  pain  conceded  all  she 
asked,  Neith  fairly  cried,  "what  can  I  do?" 

They  had  drifted  toward  the  obelisk  as  the  dominant 
point  of  the  scene,  the  point  where  the  hurrying  crowd 
was  likely  to  leave  them  most  to  themselves,  and  leaned, 
in  that  cold  privacy  of  the  drift  and  the  rising  wind, 
against  its  rail.  Pale  rounds  of  light  like  swathed  pearls 
beaded  the  whitening  roads. 

"We've  lived  in  a  fool's  paradise,  we  women,"  said 


NO.  26  JAYNE  STREET  315 

Rose  Matlock  —  "in  a  stage  paradise  of  'made  love,' 
'influenced'  idealisms,  'cultivated'  culture.  We've 
played  upon  men.  We've  played  at  civilization.  Now 
and  then  comes  something  like  this  war  and  upsets  the 
play.  I,  for  one,  will  play  no  more.  I  will  not  play!"  She 
struck  with  her  closed  hand  against  the  rail. 

"I  will  not,"  she  finished,  "be  played  upon!"  She 
came  back  slowly  out  of  her  desperate  preoccupation. 
"I  must  not,  Miss  Schuyler,  keep  you  here  in  the  cold." 
By  common  consent  they  turned  toward  the  gate;  the 
clogging  slither  of  the  soft  snow  underfoot  held  them  to 
some  sort  of  definiteness.  "I  appreciate  your  coming  to 
me  like  this,  Miss  Schuyler.  You  can  see,  though,  that 
the  thing  I  have  most  to  fear  is  that  you  should  do  some 
thing.  Something,  I  mean,  that  would  prevent  the  sit 
uation  resolving  on  its  own  merits." 

"Ah,  I  can  do  what  you  said.  I  can  just  let  him  alone." 

"Until  he  sees  what  to  do  himself." 

"Until  he  sees.  You  know,"  Neith  brightly  affirmed, 
"I  have  the  greatest  confidence  in  his  doing  abso 
lutely  the  right  thing  when  he  does."  They  had  stopped 
aimlessly  at  the  curb.  A  cab  from  the  Museum  rank 
slipped  suggestively  alongside.  Miss  Matlock  put  up  her 
hand.  "One  must  remember,"  she  agreed,  "how  com 
pletely,  in  the  fields  outside  his  own  behavior,  he  has 
seen.  You're  going  my  way?" 

"No,  I  shall  walk."  She  set  out  quickly,  waving  her 
hand  toward  the  dusky  interior  of  the  cab  for  good 
bye. 


316  NO.  26  JAYNE  STREET 

§61 

It  was  in  Neith's  mind  to  walk  across  the  length  of 
the  Park  to  the  end  of  Sixth  and  take  the  El.  there.  Her 
high  mood  demanded  action;  the  long  stride,  the  breast 
ing  of  winds  on  the  hillocks  and  sliding  runs  down  the 
tree-filled  hollows.  There  was  mysterious  beauty  in  the 
trees  hung  with  wet  white  drapery,  in  the  white,  sleep 
ing  flanks  of  the  great  park,  the  pearled  lights,  beauty 
like  the  high,  cool  tenderness  of  renunciation  in  her 
mind.  She  would  give  Adam  up;  she  would  stand  off 
from  him  as  she  had  seen  women  in  England  stand 
away  from  their  men,  giving  them,  unclung-to  and  un- 
softened  by  regrets,  to  the  execution  of  the  justice  of  na 
tions.  She  had  not  yet  been  called  upon  to  give  him  to 
the  war,  but  there  was  a  greater  war  to  come  between 
the  passions  and  inclinations  of  men,  in  the  ordering  of 
the  new  earth  which  was  to  issue  from  the  travail  of  the 
old.  Here  and  there  broke  on  her  musings  little  flares  of 
exultation.  They  would  take  the  measure  of  Democracy 
in  themselves,  they  three:  Adam,  and  Rose  Matlock, 
and  herself. 

She  began  to  shape  in  her  mind  phrases  of  the  letter 
she  would  write  to  Adam.  She  would  not  see  him  again 
until  he  came  to  her  clear  of  every  entangling  claim.  She 
would  not  see  him  at  all.  And  then  the  phrases  as  she 
brought  them  forth  in  her  mind  began  to  fail.  They 
were  strangely  phrases  of  his  own,  of  Rose  Matlock's, 
phrases  everywhere  tossed  about  as  the  shibboleths  of 


NO.  26  JAYNE  STREET  317 

the  Radical  group.  They  were  phrases  that  had  passed 
between  Adam  and  herself,  pregnant  with  fire.  Some  of 
them  had  already  been  said  in  her  presence,  and  by 
Rose.  She  remembered  that  Adam  had  been  irritated  by 
them  in  some  strange,  elemental  way.  Rose  had  said  he 
was  afraid.  She  had  seen  that  fretful,  unnamed  fear  in 
the  faces  of  the  judges  who  condemned  the  companions 
of  Hippolyte  Leninsky.  Women  who  went  down  to 
Washington,  to  urge  some  adjustment  of  the  woman's 
burden  of  the  war  more  in  accordance  with  the  facts  of 
woman's  changing  relation  to  it,  spoke  of  themselves  as 
defeated  always  by  that  covert,  unstated  fear  in  the 
minds  of  the  men  they  dealt  with. 

In  her  preoccupation  Neith  missed  the  proper  turn 
and  found  herself  at  Columbus  Circle,  with  wet  feet  and 
exceedingly  weary.  Mind  and  body  she  felt  unequal  to 
the  jostle  of  the  public  conveyances  at  that  hour.  She 
looked  about  for  a  cab,  asked  her  way  of  a  street  urchin 
dancing  in  the  gusts  of  warmer  air  that  came  up  from  a 
subway  grating.  He  ran  with  her  for  half  a  block  to  give 
point  to  his  direction,  thrusting  his  wares  up  into  her  face. 

"Paper,  Missus!  All  'bout  the  death  of  'stinguished 
aviator ! " 

She  bought  it  out  of  pure  politeness,  folding  its  wet 
surface  in  as  she  climbed  into  the  cab.  She  had  gone  a 
block  or  two  before,  as  the  cab  checked  in  the  press  of 
traffic,  it  unfolded  limply  before  her.  In  a  moment  she 
had  seized  the  speaking-tube  and  given  an  order  that 
sent  the  taxi  darting  north  toward  Sixty-Ninth. 


318  NO.  26  JAYNE  STREET 

She  was  going  to  Frances  Rittenhouse. 

It  would  be  terrible  if  it  came  to  his  mother  like  that, 
the  headlines  of  the  paper,  with  no  warning.  She  had 
heard  that  was  often  the  case  when  the  casualty  was  a 
part  of  the  day's  news.  Just  the  ordinary  evening  keen 
ness  to  know  the  day's  drift  of  events,  and  then  the  star 
ing  headlines:  "Major  Eustace  Rittenhouse  Falls  to  His 
Death  in  France." 

He  had  been  up  scouting  with  two  companions, 
swinging  in  wide  figures  of  eight  over  the  region  of  the 
Somme.  Suddenly  out  of  a  cloud  five  great  German 
planes  roared  upon  them.  The  Americans  wheeled  like 
eagles,  up  and  out,  and  then  down  as  agreed,  to  bring 
the  enemy  planes  within  range  of  the  hidden  guns. 

One  of  them  had  trouble  with  his  engine;  the  German 
plane  was  almost  on  him.  Eustace,  following,  saw,  and 
came  crashing  straight  to  the  pursuer's  death  and  his 
own.  Their  machines  broke  in  mid-air  and  came  drop 
ping  heavily  in  smoke  and  flame  behind  the  German 
lines.  The  aviator  who  escaped  remembered  a  thin,  high 
shout;  piercing  the  roar  of  the  engines,  "O — ho  Boy!" 
It  was  Eustace's  battle-song. 

Neith  went  past  the  startled  telephone  girl  at  Mrs. 
Rittenhouse's  apartments,  straight  for  the  stairway. 
She  had  an  impression  that  there  was  not  time  for  the 
elevator.  Frances  Rittenhouse  was  coming  down.  Be 
hind  her  the  colored  maid,  forcing  her  lax  arms  into  a 
coat,  mingled  caution  and  persuasion. 

"Now,  Mis'  Rittenhouse,  don't  you  do  nothin'  brash. 


NO.  26  JAYNE  STREET  319 

Jest  le'  me  git  this  coat  on  you,  honey.  Don't  you  take 
them  papers  too  hard;  you  cain't  most  allus  believe 


'em." 


"Let  me  go,  Clorinda." 

"Honey,  you  ought  n't  to  go  nowhere  like  this!" 

"Let  her  go  with  me,  Clorinda,  I  have  a  taxi." 

Frances  consented  blindly  to  be  buttoned  into  her 
coat.  Neith  knew  very  well  where  she  would  be  going. 
"Did  you  get  news  from  Headquarters?"  she  asked 
presently;  she  was  beginning  to  add  something  about 
the  necessity  of  keeping  up  hope  until  the  news  dispatch 
was  confirmed,  but  Eustace's  mother  silenced  her. 

"I've  known,"  she  said.  "The  other  machine  had  the 
photographs.  It  was  exactly  the  sort  of  thing  Eustace 
would  do." 

"It  was  a  gallant  thing." 

After  that  they  sat  in  silence  until  the  taxi  pulled  up 
at  the  General's  door.  George,  the  janitor,  had  his  own 
paper  in  his  hand  when  he  let  them  in.  He  was  Clorinda's 
father,  and  he  had  dandled  Major  Rittenhouse  on  his 
knee. 

"Yassum,  Miss  Schuyler,  the  General's  paper  done 
gone  up  at  de  usual  time.  I  neve'  had  no  suspicion;  I  jes' 
shoved  it  under  de  do'  like  allus.  I  did  n'  see  it  myse'f 
tel  er  minit  ago.  I  liss'ened  outside  de  General's  door, 
but  I  ain't  heerd  nuffin.  I  kin'  o'  skeered  to  go  in."  He 
had  dropped  his  voice  as  Frances  Rittenhouse  had 
brushed  by  him,  "Two  ladies  jes'  gone  up  de  stair,"  he 
whispered. 


320  NO.  26  JAYNE  STREET 

Neith  sprang  ahead.  But  the  strength  of  the  utterly 
desolate  was  on  Frances  Rittenhouse;  she  brushed 
Emmy  and  Aunt  Doremas  from  the  threshold  where 
they  hung  in  tremors  that  were  no  longer  ridiculous,  and 
flung  open  her  husband's  door.  He  sat  there  in  his  chair 
staring  straight  before  him.  The  paper  had  slipped  from 
his  knees  to  the  floor. 

"Eustace!  Eustace!  He's  gone!  My  boy!  My  baby!" 

"Gone!  Yes.  He's  gone."  The  old  General  got  stiffly 
up,  but  it  was  the  stiffness  of  remembered  dignity. 
"Gone,"  he  said.  "Major  Eustace  Rittenhouse,  killed 
in  action.  Gone  as  a  Rittenhouse  should,  Frances.  My 
son!"  In  the  glow  of  that  rehabilitation,  he  stepped 
strongly  forward  and  took  his  son's  mother  in  his  arms. 

Neith  had  closed  the  door,  but  the  sound  of  weeping 
came  through  its  thin  panels  and  shook  the  stale  air  of 
the  landing. 

"She  should  n't  have  let  him  go  off  to  Belgium  in  the 
first  place."  Aunt  Doremas's  fierce  old  head  trembled; 
there  was  a  strange  commotion  up  and  down  between 
her  wattles.  "If  he  had  n't  been  so  experienced,  they'd 
never  have  let  him  go  up  that  way." 

"Eustace  always  would.  I  remember  when  he  was 
such  a  little  fellow  that  he  could  n't  say  my  name  ...  he 
used  to  insist  on  crossing  the  street  in  front  of  me.  'I'll 
take  care  of  you,  Nemeny.' .  .  .  Were  .  .  .  were  you  en 
gaged  to  him,  Neithie?  ..." 

"Almost,  Aunt  Emmy.  I  was  very  fond  of  him." 

"I  guess  you  better  stay  with  us  to-night."  Aunt 


NO.  26  JAYNE  STREET  321 

Doremas  got  herself  together.  "Frances  will  want  to 
stay  here.  I'll  send  Horlick  over  with  things.  You'd  bet 
ter  stay  awhile,  and  tell  her." 

She  went  down,  leaning  heavily  on  the  banister.  She 
was  very  old,  and  the  number  of  her  kin  diminished 
rapidly.  "I  guess  we'll  take  Frances's  cab,  Emmy;  you 
can  cry  all  you  want  inside." 

XX 

§62 

NEITH  SCHUYLER  lay  in  her  bed  at  Twenty-Six  Jayne 
Street,  staring  into  the  dark.  As  she  lay,  tears  forced 
themselves  down  her  quiet  cheeks  and  long,  shivering 
sobs  shook  her  from  head  to  foot.  It  had  been  ten  days 
since  the  news  of  Eustace  Rittenhouse's  death,  but  it 
was  not  for  Eustace  she  cried.  Her  grief  for  his  gallant 
ending  was  tempered  with  tenderness  and  something  al 
most  like  relief.  He  was  hers  to  think  of  tenderly  now,  as 
long  as  she  lived.  She  need  never  feel  now  that  the  kind 
of  love  she  could  give  him  would  stand  in  his  way.  And 
she  was  forever  safe  against  the  possibility  of  her  yield 
ing  to  the  kind  of  love  she  had  for  him,  in  a  marriage 
which  should  be  less  than  the  marriage  she  had  been 
able  to  imagine  with  Adam  Frear.  That,  she  realized, 
might  have  been  the  case  if,  as  it  now  seemed,  Adam 
failed  her. 

Adam  had  called  her  up  on  the  telephone  the  morning 
after  the  news  had  reached  them  about  Eustace.  The 


NO.  26  JAYNE  STREET 

things  he  said  had  been  beautifully  kind.  A  day  or  two 
later  he  met  her  between  Jayne  Street  and  the  Ritten- 
house  place  and  took  her  to  tea.  The  certainty  which 
was  in  the  air,  that  he  had  informed  himself  of  her  move 
ments  and  waited  about  for  the  chance  to  offer  her  just 
this  supporting  sense  of  his  interest  in  her,  gave  to  their 
hour  at  the  Brevoort,  where  they  were  presently  en 
sconced  at  one  of  the  little  tables  close  to  the  half  wall, 
a  renewal  of  the  charm  of  courtship.  She  had  yielded 
to  it  more  than  she  knew. 

They  kept  the  talk  away  from  themselves  at  first  and 
playing  about  those  fine  aristocracies  of  conduct,  sug 
gested  by  Eustace  and  the  manner  of  his  end.  Quite 
unconsciously,  so  far  as  Neith  was  concerned,  they 
courted  each  other  afresh  under  high  names  of  heroism 
and  devotion  to  the  tribal  totem. 

"What  I  like  best  to  remember  about  Eustace," 
Neith  concluded,  "is  what  everybody  is  saying,  that  if 
he  had  hesitated  by  so  much  as  would  have  been  long 
enough  to  make  up  an  ordinary  mind,  if  he  had  found  it 
necessary  to  make  his  mind  up  at  all,  he  could  n't  have 
done  what  he  did.  Would  have  lost,  I  mean,  his  chance 
to  do  it  successfully.  It  is  beautiful  to  remember  that  his 
mind  was  so  made  up  that  there  was  no  tripping  over  it 
in  the  performance." 

"It  is  like  that,"  Frear  agreed,  "when  you  have  iden 
tified  your  life  with  the  welfare  of  a  group.  You  can  go 
smashing  through  pain  and  death  as  easy  as  a  pane  of 
glass.  You  don't  see  them  any  more  than  you  see  the 


NO.  26  JAYNE  STREET  323 

glass;  you  see  through  and  beyond.  These  men  over  in 
Russia  who  are  leading  the  Revolution,  they  are  like 
that.  The  Revolution  to  them  is  just  glass;  to  be  broken 
through.  Into  Freedom  — "  He  kindled. 

"I  wonder"  —  Neith  kept  the  lowlier  way  of  her 
recent  contact  with  grief  —  "if  breaking  through  pain 
is  n't  very  like  breaking  through  glass;  it  only  hurts  as 
you  go  through,  and  if  you  go  through  quickly  enough 
it  scarcely  hurts  at  all.  I  'd  like  to  think  that  about  Eus 
tace,  that  he  went  through  to  the  larger  Freedom  with 
no  pain."  She  reverted  naturally  to  her  own  experience 
of  war.  "It  is  amazing,"  she  said,  "what  men  will  endure 
without  apparently  feeling  it  when  they  are  convinced 
of  the  general  good;  things  the  bystander  can  scarcely 
bear  to  look  at,  much  less  to  think  about." 

"It  will  be  like  that,"  Frear  surmised,  "with  the  so 
cial  changes  that  are  coming.  When  we  get  done  fight 
ing  them  in  anticipation,  and  let  them  come,  we  '11  find 
that  they  are  nothing  like  so  upsetting.  If  we  once  got  a 
real  vital  impulse  toward  social  regeneration  —  such  an 
impulse  as  carried  your  cousin  to  his  end  —  we  'd  go 
through"  —  he  paused  for  the  word  —  "gallantly." 

"Yes,  whether  we  were  afraid  or  not.  Eustace  told  me 
once  that  he  was  often  afraid  as  he  started  up,  just  as  he 
was  often  a  little  sick;  but  he  paid  no  attention  to  either 
of  them." 

As  they  said  these  things,  because  the  background  of 
her  own  mind  was  continually  occupied  with  the  per 
sonal  relation,  she  took  it  for  granted  that,  under  the 


324  NO.  26  JAYNE  STREET 

cover  of  Eustace's  achievement,  they  were  really  getting 
at  one  another  again.  That  was  how  she  wished  him  to 
take  the  personal  situation,  with  a  fine  inward  commit 
ment  to  honor  and  justice  that  would  carry  him  past  the 
immediate  annoyance  to  himself  and  release  them  all 
into  the  larger  freedom.  Out  of  her  sheltered  past  and 
her  intimacy  with  the  sick  man,  her  father,  she  had 
brought  no  measure  for  the  preponderance  of  egoism  in 
the  casual  love  adventures  of  the  average  man.  She  had 
not  admitted  the  idea  of  casualness  to  her  thinking 
about  the  man  she  had  expected  to  marry.  Like  most 
delicately  minded  women,  if  she  thought  of  it  at  all, 
the  disposition  to  casualness  was  something  which  one 
ignored  in  one's  self  as  Eustace  had  ignored  his  dis 
position  toward  nausea  in  the  air. 

She  had  not,  since  the  news  about  Eustace,  found 
time  to  write  the  note  that  she  had  promised  herself. 
Now,  though  she  admitted  Adam  to  the  house  at  Jayne 
Street  with  the  express  purpose  of  remedying  that  omis 
sion,  somehow,  within  the  aura  of  his  charm,  the  clear, 
high  sentences  broke  into  murmurs  and  endearments. 
And,  after  all,  what  had  their  talk  been  but  high  and 
adequate  to  the  establishment  of  a  mutual  ground  from 
which  to  take  difficult  situations?  What  she  had  finally 
said  had  been  of  the  simplest,  the  mere  punctuation  of 
their  temporary  renewal. 

She  had  seen  Rose,  she  said,  and  had  a  satisfactory 
talk  with  her.  "She  is  a  great  woman,  Adam,  an  ex 
traordinary  woman.  We  can  never  live  up  to  her." 


NO.  26  JAYNE  STREET  325 

"Oh,  never!"  he  had  conceded  with  relief. 

"But  we  must  live  up  to  the  situation.  Somehow  this 
that  has  happened  to  Eustace  makes  me  ashamed. 
Ashamed  not  to  come  clear  as  he  did,  with  a  rush,  be 
cause  our  minds  are  completely  made  up  to  clearness. 
I  told  her  I  would  n't  see  you  again  until  we  are  clear. 
We  are  agreed  to  that,  that  we  ought  to  come  clear  on 
general  principles,  without  attempting  to  influence  one 
another." 

"Yes."  He  was  extraordinarily  gentle  with  her. 

"I  was  going  to  write,  but  —  I've  been  with  Eus 
tace's  mother  a  great  deal.  Miss  Matlock  would  under 
stand.  So  —  I  think  we  had  better  say  —  good-bye, 
Adam." 

He  took  her  in  his  arms.  This  was  not  within  the  letter 
of  her  agreement,  but  she  was  glad,  afterward,  to  think 
that  she  had  not  resisted  him.  He  had  held  her  there  for 
as  long  —  and  it  was  not  long  either  —  as  brought  back 
the  old  flooding  sense  of  his  wonderfulness.  Under  that 
compulsion  she  had  put  up  one  thin,  shapely  hand  to  his 
cheek,  and  drawn  it  down  to  hers. 

"Oh,  soon,  Adam,  soon!" 

"Soon!"  he  promised,  and  strained  her  to  him  in  a 
quick,  fierce  tenderness. 

§63 

There  had  been  an  interval  in  which  Neith  had  given 
herself  to  helping  Frances  Rittenhouse  resettle  herself 
in  the  Eleventh  Street  house.  It  was  easier  to  do  that 


326  NO.  26  JAYNE  STREET 

than  to  habituate  her  husband  to  new  quarters.  And  the 
old  house  was  full  of  memories  of  Eustace,  so  full  that 
at  times  the  General  seemed  to  forget  that  he  had  ever 
left  it.  He  was  always  expecting  Eustace  to  come  in, 
even  when  he  was  clear  in  his  mind  that  what  he  was  to 
come  for  was  to  tell  them  about  his  adventures  in  Bel 
gium  and  France.  This  sudden  reinstatement  of  his  ban 
ished  son  would  have  counted  for  the  weakness  of  senil 
ity  with  Neith  if  it  had  not  been  for  a  discovery,  made 
by  Mrs.  Rittenhouse,  of  a  little  heap  of  clippings  in  a 
drawer  of  her  husband's  desk;  all  the  things  that  had 
been  in  the  papers  about  Eustace  from  the  beginning. 
Love  had  been,  after  all,  a  greater  autocrat  than  injured 
egotism. 

The  General's  Civil  War  collection  was  being  stripped 
from  the  walls,  to  be  bestowed  on  the  National  Histori 
cal  Museum,  together  with  the  History  of  the  Great 
War  Day  by  Day.  It  had  got  no  farther  than  Appomat- 
tox,  but  the  General  himself  was  done.  He  was  wholly 
occupied  in  moving  relays  of  colored  pins  across  a  map 
of  Europe,  and  writing  military  advice  to  the  staff  offi 
cers.  He  had  convinced  himself  for  the  most  part  that 
his  son  Eustace  was  a  prisoner  inside  the  German  lines 
and  that  at  almost  any  time  they  might  expect  to  hear 
from  him. 

Neith  was  quite  extraordinarily  moved  by  these 
things  and  by  the  deep  fountains  of  affection  which  rose 
out  of  Frances  Rittenhouse's  heart  and  covered  them 
with  tenderness.  This  was  the  way  in  which  Adam  must 


NO.  26  JAYNE  STREET  327 

be  loved.  Neith  held  her  own  heart  toward  their  common 
situation  like  a  candle  on  an  altar. 

§64 

And  this  very  morning  a  letter  had  come  from  Rose 
Matlock,  enclosing  another  from  Adam's  lawyer,  very 
guarded  and  brief.  It  was  to  the  effect  that  he  had  been 
taken  into  his  client's  confidence  for  the  purpose  of  pro 
tecting  him  from  any  further  annoyance  or  interference 
in  his  affairs  by  herself.  It  was  not  exactly  a  threatening 
letter,  but  instinct  with  cold  menace;  a  shyster  letter; 
for  neither  in  the  superscription  nor  the  text  did  it  men 
tion  Adam's  name  or  Miss  Matlock's.  It  was  the  sort  of 
letter  likely  to  be  written  by  a  man  who,  having  disre 
garded  the  law  for  his  own  purposes,  had  found  it  con 
venient  to  get  behind  when  the  event  seemed  likely  to 
involve  him  in  unpleasantness.  Neith  knew  the  name 
at  the  bottom  of  the  letter  for  one  that  stood  high  in 
Fleeta's  list.  Across  the  back  of  it  Rose  Matlock  had 
penciled,  "I  don't  know  what  this  means,  do  you?" 

Neith,  lying  slim  and  straight  in  her  bed,  shook  with 
the  anguish  of  hot,  hard-coming  tears,  because  she  knew. 

§65 

She  understood  quite  simply  and  explicitly;  as  though 
Eustace's  own  straight-seeing  spirit  had  stayed  awhile 
for  the  express  purpose  of  helping  her  see,  that  the  whole 
region  of  Adam's  personal  reactions  was  familiar  ground. 
It  was  the  wind-sown,  unclaimed  field  in  which  his  pas- 


328  NO.  26  JAYNE  STREET 

sions  ran  neck  and  neck  with  Bruce  Havens Js  greed  of 
the  "business"  game,  and  the  Senator's  crass  appetite 
for  power.  Here  he  unleashed  himself  to  the  old  tricks 
and  evasions,  the  unrestricted  play  of  selfness  in  the  per 
sonal  relation.  A  jilted  woman  was  a  jilted  woman;  one 
who  took  her  measure  from  his  desire.  The  law,  a  hurdle 
in  the  game.  At  all  times  and  occasions  a  woman  was 
a  secondary  thing. 

There  was  extraordinary  clarity  in  Neith's  seeing,  as 
she  lay  there,  and  no  especial  bitterness.  That  was  just 
how  it  was.  When  it  came  to  women,  Adam  was  a 
bounder.  She  was  thankful  to  see  it  so;  to  be  spared  the 
horror  which  Rose  Matlock's  own  engrossment  with  the 
larger  vision  had  made  her  see  as  something  inexplicable 
and  strange.  Adam  had  done  what  Aunt  Doremas  would 
have  done  to  the  strikers  at  Marcy,  what  Millicent  and 
Bruce  would  have  done  to  Mrs.  Kendries  if  they  dared, 
what  public  opinion  had  already  done  to  poor  Hippolyte 
Leninsky.  In  other  words,  he  had  done  an  exceedingly 
bourgeois  thing  under  the  very  banners  and  shibboleths 
of  the  Social  Revolution.  Only,  few  of  the  bourgeois  of 
Neith's  personal  acquaintance  would  have  done  any 
thing  quite  so  bald  as  that.  Bruce,  for  example.  Bruce 
would  have  paid  —  money.  A  poor  enough  substitute 
for  faith  and  consideration.  But  then  Bruce  would  never 
have  obligated  himself  to  pay  anything  but  money. 
With  Bruce  it  would  from  the  first  have  been  a  "busi 
ness  proposition." 

And  where  had  they  arrived,  she  and  Rose  and  Adam, 


NO.  26  JAYNE  STREET  329 

but  getting  outside  the  "business"  moralities  —  the 
morality  of  the  equivalent  rendered?  No,  not  she  and 
Rose.  She  would  stand  by  Rose;  she  would  not  —  what 
was  the  word  Sadie  had  used?  She  would  not  "scab." 

Had  women  always  scabbed  on  each  other,  that  Adam 
expected  it  of  her?  Thank  God,  Rose  had  n't  .  .  .  she 
had  had  the  courage  to  present  her  account  .  .  .  that 
letter  .  .  . 

A  whole  flight  of  minor  items,  unnoted  when  they 
happened,  came  trooping  back,  lit  to  new  significance 
by  the  hot  glow  of  her  mind  .  .  .  the  letter  which  never 
reached  her  .  .  .  Rose's  evident  disconcertion  at  what 
she  found  .  .  .  Adam's  fierce  certitude  that  Rose  at 
least  had  no  claim  on  her. 

Had  there  been  another  and  more  transient  interest? 

Let  that  go. 

Through  and  over  it  all  was  her  own  need  of  him,  his 
touch  on  her  hand,  his  voice  in  her  ear.  It  was  like  a 
slow-turning  sword.  The  thing  that  happened  when  peo 
ple  truly  mated,  had  it  already  happened  to  her?  Was 
there  something  of  her  that  would  never  be  her  own 
again,  but  Adam  Frear's?  But  if  she  suffered  like  that, 
what  of  Rose?  .  .  .  She  could  never  see  Rose  again.  It 
was  n't  decent.  She  understood  why  animals  turned 
their  backs  on  one  another  in  their  pain.  That,  of  course, 
was  why  women  had  always  hidden  these  things.  One 
had  to  pretend  that  it  was  impossible,  because  it  was  un 
dignified,  for  one  human  being  to  make  another  suffer 
so  much.  No,  it  was  n't  really  decent. 


330  NO.  26  JAYNE  STREET 

Suddenly  there  came  back  to  her  the  pattern  of 
Adam's  hair,  where  it  waved  back  from  his  forehead, 
the  trick  of  his  hand  hiding  his  mouth  when  he  was 
taken  by  surprise. 

§66 

A  night  or  two  after  Eustace's  death,  while  Neith  was 
still  staying  on  with  her  Aunts,  Emmy  had  come  into 
her  room  to  sit  on  her  bed  and  talk  about  Eustace. 
Neith  was  already  lying  back  among  the  pillows  with 
the  curtain  up.  She  could  see  the  electric  cross  shining 
against  the  pure  winter  sky,  and  across  the  lower  part  of 
the  window  the  ends  of  a  maple  bough,  the  buds  of 
which  in  the  last  mild  day  or  two  showed  mysteriously 
pregnant  with  life.  She  was  seeing  that,  and  at  the  same 
time  she  was  seeing  quite  clearly,  and  without  disturb 
ing  her  view  of  the  cross  and  the  swelling  bough,  the 
snow-streaked  fields  of  northern  France,  and  Eustace 
flying  high  up  and  steadily  with  a  singing  rush.  Two  or 
three  times  she  had  been  upon  the  brink  of  seeing  him 
falling  .  .  .  falling  .  .  .  But  she  had  pulled  herself  back 
from  that  and  fixed  her  mind  upon  him  as  she  had  seen 
him  once  in  the  flying-field  of  Long  Island,  springing  up 
and  up,  and  leaving  her,  as  she  felt  herself,  a  dwindling 
speck. 

She  recalled  that  there  had  been  several  aviators 
hanging  about,  vaguely  determining  from  time  to  time 
to  go  up.  Eustace  had  told  her  about  that,  how  they 
hung  about  for  hours  sometimes  in  an  unconfessed  state 


NO.  26  JAYNE  STREET  331 

of  reluctance,  and  then  once  up,  how  they  dared,  and  in 
vented  strange  dips  and  turnovers  with  a  kind  of  de 
light.  She  wished  to  think  always  of  Eustace  as  going  up 
and  up,  and  vanishing  in  light.  She  wished  to  think  of 
death  like  that,  and  of  the  odd,  human  reluctance  toward 
it  falling  off  like  a  garment  as  one  went  up.  And  as  she 
saw  the  cross  it  occurred  to  her  that  after  all,  it  was  one 
of  the  prime  meanings  of  Christianity,  that  one  did  n't 
go  down  into  death,  but  up  and  out  toward  light. 

And  as  she  thought  these  things,  there  was  the 
hunched,  heavy  curve  of  the  middle  aged  in  the  quilted 
dressing-gown  across  her  picture.  Aunt  Emmy  took  up 
one  quarter  of  the  window  frame,  as  the  buds  of  the 
maple  filled  the  other,  and  all  at  once  Neith  found  herself 
struck  with  a  suggestion  in  her  Aunt's  bulky  outlines,  of 
the  fullness  of  coming  life.  As  if  age  itself  were  only  a 
kind  of  quiescent  preparation  for  renewal!  She  felt  the 
sagging  of  the  bed  under  Emmy's  weight  as  a  friendly 
stirring  of  continuity  of  the  bed  and  the  bough  and  what 
was  going  on  in  the  clear  vault. 

But  Aunt  Emmy  had  wanted  to  talk  about  her  niece's 
almost  engagement  to  Eustace. 

"You  are  n't  crying,  are  you,  Neithie?" 

"No,  Emmy,  not  now." 

Aunt  Emmy  had  cried  herself  until  she  sounded  like  a 
bad  cold  in  the  head,  but  she  had  cried  some  dignity 
into  her  poor  old  soul. 

"I'm  glad,  Neith.  Not  but  what  you  had  a  perfect 
right  to  cry.  I  guess  nobody  would  say  anything  if  you 


332  NO.  26  JAYNE  STREET 

wanted  to  put  on  mourning,  even  if  you  were  n't  exactly 
engaged.  Everybody  knows  Eustace  was  crazy  about 
you.  Millicent  has  told  us  things.  But  I  don't  want  you 
to  feel  so  badly  about  Eustace  that  it  will  keep  you  from 
thinking  of  anybody  else.  I  —  don't  want  you  should  be 
an  old  maid,  Neithie." 

"People  don't  think  anything  of  that,  nowadays, 
Aunt  Emmy." 

"People  don't  know."  There  was  a  scared,  tragic 
quality  in  the  old  voice,  as  though  all  the  outraged  tradi 
tions  of  her  generation  were  lurking  about.  "Old  maids 
are  n't  supposed  to  say  what  they  feel,  and  before  they 
are  old  maids  nobody  tells  them.  Nobody  told  me." 

"Emmy,  dear!  Is  it  so  bad  as  that?" 

"If  anybody  had  just  told  me!"  There  was  a  spark 
of  something  quite  definite  behind  Aunt  Emmy's  feeble 
fierceness  of  desolation.  "There  was  a  young  man  used 
to  come  and  see  me;  he  worked  in  Uncle  Van's  office. 
Becky  thought  he  was  n't  good  enough  for  a  Schuyler, 
and  I  let  her  drive  him  away.  But  if  I  had  known  — 

"You  see,  I  thought  marriage  was  something  that 
just  happened  to  everybody.  I  never  dreamed  it  would 
n't  happen  to  me.  Neithie,  I  don't  want  you — "  The 
poor  lady  made  liberal  use  of  her  pocket  handkerchief. 

"Emmy,  come  over  here  on  the  pillow  beside  me." 

Aunt  Emmy  shifted  her  unwieldy  bulk,  and  the  cross 
and  the  bough  shone  clear  in  the  clear  obscure  square  of 
the  window.  "Neith,"  she  whispered,  "old  maids  are  n't 
different  from  other  women.  They  want  —  everything! 


NO.  26  JAYNE  STREET  333 

Sometimes  for  days  .  .  .  Neithie,  you  must  n't  think  too 
much  about  Eustace;  you  must  find  somebody  else!" 

"You  mustn't  worry,  Emmy.  There  is  —  some 
body." 

"Well,  I'm  glad!" 

And  now  it  appeared  that  there  was  nobody  else. 

§67 

For  Neith  knew  exactly  what  she  would  do.  She  did  it 
as  soon  as  she  had  dragged  herself  up  in  the  morning  and 
put  her  house  in  order  for  the  day.  She  found  her  ring 
and  two  or  three  other  little  reminders  of  Adam,  and 
put  them  together  with  the  lawyer's  letter  and  Rose's 
penciled  note.  When  she  had  made  them  into  a  packet, 
across  the  back  of  it  she  wrote: 

Until  you  see  and  understand. 

She  said  nothing  whatever  about  what  he  was  to  do. 
She  thought  she  could  put  up  very  well  with  anything 
he  might  decide  to  do  if  once  he  could  understand.  He 
was  to  understand  that  this  Democracy  he  talked  so 
much  about  was  something  more  than  the  bright,  wa 
vering  guidon  of  social  change.  It  was  something  more 
than  a  rule  of  procedure  that  could  be  applied  to  the 
frame  of  government  or  the  distribution  of  goods.  It  was 
something  as  intimate  as  love  or  anger  and  more  im 
perative  than  both,  wing  and  wing  of  your  being.  It  was 
something  that  committed  you  to  the  adventure  of  the 
whole  so  that  the  little  sicknesses  of  your  spirit,  the 


334  NO.  26  JAYNE  STREET 

fears  and  pains  and  repulsions,  were  no  more  than  a 
stain  on  its  surface.  It  carried  you  past  them  with  a 
great  roar  of  singing  planes.  .  .  . 

That  these  dead  shall  not  have  died  in  vain.  .  .  . 

If  one  saw  it  like  that,  it  did  not  greatly  matter  what 
one  did.  And  as  for  how  one  felt  .  .  .  one  might  just  as 
well  have  the  best  of  feeling  about  it  since  you  paid  as 
much  in  either  case. 

She  undid  the  half-finished  wrapping  of  the  packet 
and  wrote  under  her  former  words : 

With  love,  Neith. 

And  because  the  urgency  of  her  mood  would  not  let 
her  rest  with  it  in  the  house,  she  called  a  messenger  and 
dispatched  it  to  Adam  Frear. 

XXI 

§68 

IF  only  there  had  been  something  Neith  could  do  her 
self  to  clarify  the  situation  in  which  she  was  so  much 
concerned!  Women,  no  doubt,  whose  men  were  at  war 
felt  like  that.  The  helplessness,  and  the  long,  voiceless 
days!  Perhaps  she  ought  not  to  have  sent  back  the  ring; 
she  should  have  kept  it  as  the  symbol  of  her  unbroken 
affection,  of  her  unbroken  faith  that  he  would  yet  see. 
He  had  behaved  abominably.  He  had  behaved  in  a 
way  that  one  must  take  notice  of,  and  without  any  hesi 
tations.  One  owed  that  to  him  as  well  as  to  oneself.  But 


NO.  26  JAYNE  STREET  335 

she  loved  him  —  as  other  women  loved  the  war-scarred 
things  that  came  back  to  them.  She  remembered  a 
woman  in  France  trundling  in  a  little  cart  the  legless, 
armless  trunk  of  a  man.  And  the  deep  shining  of  that 
woman's  eyes! 

Oh,  thank  God,  there  were  no  such  spiritual  mutila 
tions.  One  did  n't  have  to  love  a  half-souled  man.  There 
were  regenerations,  new  and  more  splendid  growths, 
whiter  shining.  She  took  a  picture  of  Adam  that  she  had 
cut  out  of  a  magazine  and  slipped  it  behind  the  face  in  a 
little  Florentine  triptych,  before  which  it  would  seem 
only  a  quaint  conceit  to  keep  a  candle  burning.  She  tried 
re-reading  the  reports  of  his  speeches,  but  she  gave  that 
up.  For  there  were  all  the  things  she  would  have  said, 
the  high  ground  of  personal  democracy.  She  felt  herself, 
as  she  read,  bemused  by  the  incongruity  that  had  proved 
a  pitfall  for  the  clear  intelligence  of  Rose  Matlock. 

All  this  time  there  was  no  word  from  Adam  or  Rose. 
No  word  about  them.  And  without  Adam  she  found  she 
had  no  special  access  to  the  circles  where  he  was  best 
known. 

She  went  instead  to  the  Stage  Women's  War  Relief 
where  she  heard  about  Madelon  Sherrod. 

§69 

More  and  more,  as  Mrs.  Kendries  withdrew  from 
municipal  activities  to  follow  her  husband  in  his  work 
with  organized  labor,  Neith  found  herself  with  time  on 
her  hands.  For  the  things  that  Mrs.  Kendries  had  so 


336  NO.  26  JAYNE  STREET 

brightly  hoped  would  remain  as  permanent  social  gains, 
offsetting  the  losses  of  war,  had  been  all  of  them  el 
bowed  off  the  scene.  One  could  n't  say  that  the  thing 
took  shape  as  a  definite  movement  to  inhibit  any  gains 
but  those  private  possibilities  such  as  belonged  to  the 
Senator's  timely  possessions  of  spruce  forests.  It  was 
rather  that  the  impact  of  the  war  on  social  life  in  Amer 
ica,  had  driven  it  a  step  backward,  from  which  there 
was  no  rebound.  Just  as  the  food  shortage  had  been  met 
by  a  recession  into  primitive  measures,  of  the  scrapings 
of  individual  kitchens,  a  patriarchal  distribution  instead 
of  a  sweep  forward  into  more  possessive  administration 
of  the  public  board;  so  along  the  frontier  of  social  organ 
ization  there  had  been  breakages  and  temporary  disso 
lutions.  The  whole  energy  of  social  creativeness  which 
for  the  first  few  months  of  the  war  had  seemed  to  gather, 
and  to  be  about  to  exhibit,  tidal  force,  had  lapped  fu- 
tilely  about  the  blank  encircling  walls  of  the  "business 
sense"  of  the  community,  and  returned  to  fret  with  a 
deeper  insistence  in  the  old  and  only  open  channels  of 
organized  labor. 

In  all  public  places  it  was  possible  to  see  placards 
bearing  the  full  approval  of  the  Administration,  openly 
advising  the  working-classes  that  those  classes  that  best 
supported  the  Nation  during  the  war  would  gain  the 
most  at  the  end  of  it. 

Lutra  Kendries  had  shown  her  one  of  these  —  had 
pinned  it  over  her  desk,  in  fact,  with  a  short,  sharp 
laugh. 


NO.  26  JAYNE  STREET  337 

"Oh,  we  will,"  she  assured.  "We'll  get  more  than 
they  bargained  for.  Much  more."  She  sat  back  regard 
ing  with  profound,  ironic  mockery  this  general  state 
ment  of  the  war  under  the  war,  to  which  American  Con 
servatism  had  so  short-sigh tedly  subscribed.  "We'll 
support  the  war,"  she  said,  "and  we'll  collect  the  bill. 
Over  in  Russia,"  she  said,  "they're  collecting  it  now." 

But  at  the  Stage  Women's  War  Relief  there  was  an 
indefinable  sense  of  being  put  out  of  reach  of  the  checks 
and  humiliations  which  had  beset  Mrs.  Kendries's  group 
of  social  experts,  by  much  the  same  process  by  which 
one  is  put  beyond  the  reach  of  infections  by  being  inoc 
ulated  against  them.  If  its  members  suffered  in  their 
personal  relations  all  the  things  that  are  suffered  and 
appreciated  by  women  everywhere,  they  at  least  had 
something  under  foot.  Something  from  which  no  dis 
turbance  of  the  individual  orbit  completely  estranged 
them.  There  was  Madelon.  She  had  suffered  quite  as 
much  as  Rose  Matlock,  but  she  was  considerably  less 
astounded  by  it. 

And  because  of  this  sense  of  solidarity  of  being,  rather 
than  of  achieved  organization,  Neith  spent  hours  stitch 
ing  in  the  busy  quiet  of  their  rooms  and  listened  to 
gossip  about  Madelon  Sherrod. 

Madelon  was  coming  back  with  a  successful  play  and 
Julius  was  to  manage  for  her.  Vera  Jerome  had,  it  ap 
peared,  overestimated  her  own  appeal.  She  had  put  her 
self  in  the  position  toward  her  public  of  the  bright  child 
who  thinks  herself  called  to  entertain  the  company.  And 


338  NO.  26  JAYNE  STREET 

the  company  had  been  bored.  So  Vera  was  now  on  the 
road  and  Julius  was  managing  for  his  wife.  Well,  of 
course,  that  would  last  only  so  long  as  it  took  to  recoup 
the  future  he  had  lost  on  Vera;  you  had  to  take  things  of 
that  kind  for  what  they  were  worth.  At  any  rate,  Made- 
Ion  would  have  one  happy  winter. 

One  saw  that  in  Madelon,  as  soon  as  one  had  sight  of 
her.  The  thorn  was  out  of  her  side.  She  irradiated  the 
rich  atmosphere  of  talent  and  charm.  The  machines 
stopped;  there  was  a  rustle  of  young  women  rising  all 
over  the  room  when  she  came  into  it  one  sharp  February 
afternoon.  Neith  she  took  by  the  shoulders  with  a  little 
exclamation  of  alarm,  "Child,  what  have  you  been  do 
ing  to  yourself?"  Then  she  remembered  Eustace. 

"Did  you  find  out  when  it  was  too  late  that  you  did, 
after  all,  love  him?"  she  asked  an  hour  later  when  they 
were  settled  at  tea. 

"Oh,  if  it  were  as  simple  as  that!" 

Madelon  looked  her  over  with  affectionate  keenness. 
The  girl  was  thin  with  the  wasting  power  of  frustrate 
passion  in  young  flesh.  There  was  the  shadow  of  blank 
nights,  staring  in  her  eyes.  Mrs.  Sherrod  made  one  swift 
thrust  at  the  truth.  "What  has  Adam  Frear  been  doing 
to  you?" 

Neith  had  it  in  mind  that  whatever  she  told  Madelon, 
it  would  not  be  names.  She  recalled  distinctly  that  the 
first  time  she  had  met  Adam  in  the  actress's  company, 
she  had  asked  him  about  Rose  in  a  manner  that  implied 
knowing  —  something  at  least.  And  she  could  n't  give 


NO.  26  JAYNE  STREET  339 

Rose  away ;  she  was  resolved  in  any  case  to  protect  Rose. 
But  when  she  had  sketched  the  bare  outlines  of  her  case, 
Madelon's  quick  intelligence  overreached  it. 

"Don't  mind  telling  me;  is  it  Rose?  Because  she  spoke 
to  me  once,  only  slightly.  It  would  make  a  difference  in 
everything  I  say  to  you  if  it  is  Rose." 

"But  why?" 

"Because  Rose  was  born  to  beat  out  the  meaning  of 
things  on  her  own  breast.  No,  that's  not  mine,  it's  a  line 
out  of  my  new  play,  but  it  struck  me  as  suiting  Rose  ex 
actly.  Rose  is  a  little  obtuse  about  the  things  that  are 
right  under  her  eyes.  She's  always  after  the  inside  mean 
ing  of  things,  the  real  pull  and  trend  of  things.  Well,  I 
suppose  she  would  have  to  be  rather  oblivious  to  the 
little  subtle  interchanges  to  get  that.  Like  an  astronomer 
going  into  a  dark  tower  to  look  at  the  stars." 

"You  think  she  has  been  dull  with  Adam?" 

"As  Adam  would  probably  have  said,  she  handled 
him  badly." 

"Oh,  but  to  'handle'  him;  that's  just  what  she  won't 
do.  And  I  agree  with  her,  Madelon.  Adam  must  be  just, 
because  there  is  some  living  principle  of  justice  in  him. 
Not  because  some  woman  plays  him  up  to  it." 

"Yes,  of  course."  Mrs.  Sherrod  stirred  her  tea  and 
balanced  her  idea  very  carefully  in  the  spoon.  "Rose 
has  n't  any  intuition;  she  works  wholly  with  her  intelli 
gence,  and  Adam  probably  resented  that,  simply  be 
cause  he  was  n't  used  to  it.  We  talk  a  great  deal  about 
women's  intuition,"  said  the  actress,  "but  I  sometimes 


340  NO.  26  JAYNE  STREET 

wonder  if  it  has  n't  been  her  greatest  disadvantage.  It 
has  led  her  instinctively,  and  without  thinking  very 
much  about  what  it  means,  to  take  the  easy  way  with 
men;  to  'manage'  them.  Because,  honey,  I  am  afraid 
you  will  find,  if  you  intend  to  live  your  life  outside  the 
conventional  lines,  that  most  of  the  moral  and  spiritual 
'influence'  that  women  are  supposed  to  have  on  men 
is  just  as  much  as  they  have  'managed'  to  make  men 
do.  After  they  have  played  them  into  a  yielding  state 
which  is  n't  entirely  a  state  of  mind,"  she  finished  with 
a  faint  ironic  touch. 

"Well,  I  shan't  play!"  declared  the  younger  woman, 
unconsciously  repeating  Rose  Matlock's  impassioned  ne 
gation.  She  went  on  a  moment  later,  looking  over  the 
past  few  weeks  in  the  rather  bleak  light  thrown  upon 
it  by  Madelon's  unaccustomed  irony:  "That  explains 
some  things.  You  see,  I  don't  really  know  very  much 
about  what  did  go  on  between  them.  Only  I  know  that 
it  was  on  the  highest  possible  ground.  Because  one 
knows  it  would  be  that  way  with  Rose;  and  because  he 
was  always  high  with  me.  He  said  the  most  satisfactory 
things.  We  said  them." 

"Lovers  do." 

"I  thought  we  were  absolutely  agreed.  We  had  had 
rather  special  talks  on  just  these  things.  And  then,  it 
was  all  as  if  nothing  whatever  had  been  said.  It's  one  of 
the  things  that  brought  me  over  to  Rose's  side." 

"Love-making  is  like  that."  The  actress  leaned  her 
elbows  on  the  low  table  and  played  with  an  antique 


NO.  26  JAYNE  STREET  341 

chain  of  linked  intricacy  of  design  that  became  her  won 
derfully,  as  though  it  were  the  expression  of  her  intricate 
varied  experience.  "Sometimes  I  think  that  the  reason 
men  never  feel  obligated  to  keep  the  promises  they 
make  when  they  are  under  the  influence  of  —  personal 
interest"  —  she  chose  her  word  with  direct  reference  to 
her  young  friend  —  "is  that  they  know  it  is  n't  a  sound 
state  in  which  to  come  to  decisions.  It  is  as  if  they  had  a 
deeper  instinctive  feeling  for  the  truth  than  we  have.  As 
if  they  knew  that  love-making  is  a  —  a  secondary  thing 
which  they  need  n't  take  seriously." 

"Madelon — "  Neith  began  impulsively,  but  found 
the  swelling  thought  not  quite  shaped  for  expression. 
What  she  wished  to  say  was  that  it  was  something  like 
that,  some  such  stabilizing  sense  of  relative  values  as 
between  men  and  women,  that  she  had  felt  among  the 
actress's  friends.  What  she  finally  said  was,  "Then  you 
think  I  need  n't  necessarily  think  of  Adam  as  deceiving 
me,  by  not  —  not  seeming  to  mean  all  that  I  thought  he 
meant?" 

"My  dear,  when  a  man  is  deeply  in  love,  he  does  n't 
mean  anything.  He's  only  trying  to  express  a  feeling  he 
has  of  being  entirely  at  one  with  you.  And  you  need  n't 
think  either  that  Adam  will  get  off  scot-free.  He'll  pay. 
And  one  of  the  ways  he  '11  pay  is  what  in  the  course  of 
time  he  can't  help  knowing,  that  Rose  will  be  faithful 
to  him.  Always." 

"Whether  he  sees  or  not?" 

"Whether  he  sees  or  not.  His  one  chance  to  have 


NO.  26  JAYNE  STREET 

freed  her  would  have  been  to  get  out  on  the  same  plane 
that  he  went  in.  The  cheaper  he  makes  it  the  more 
she  will  feel  that  she  has  to  keep  it  up  to  the  high 
ground  it  already  had.  And  she'll  keep  it  up.  I  know 
Rose." 

"If  one  can  keep  it  up  about  a  man  who  has  behaved 
as  Adam  has  to  her." 

"Well,  let's  hope  she'll  find  a  way  to  reconcile  the 
way  he  has  behaved  with  some  of  the  fundamental  dis 
tinctions  between  men  and  women.  Besides,  all  the 
differences  of  men  from  women  are  n't  surely  differences 
of  inferiority.  One  must  believe  that." 

"Oh,  it  is  easy  to  believe!  But  still,  I  had  to  send  him 
away.  I  could  n't  just  —  whatever  made  him  do  it  — 
behave  as  if  it  had  n't  happened  at  all." 

"One  does,  sometimes." 

Neith  remembered  Julius.  "Oh,  I  could!  If  it  were 
merely  an  offense  against  me.  But  in  this  case,  you  see, 
the  offense  is  against  another  woman." 

"Yes,  of  course.  And  it  is  one  of  the  things  that 
women,  if  the  new  feminism  is  to  mean  anything  at  all, 
have  got  to  decide  about.  How  much  they  will  forgive 
for  the  other  woman.  But,  honey,  I  wish  it  had  n't  to 
be  you." 

"Why  not,  as  well  as  Rose  Matlock  —  or  you?" 
Neith  saw  that  the  older  woman's  face  had  wonderfully 
lightened  and  cleared. 

"Oh,  I  —  You  must  do  Julius  justice,  my  dear.  I 
brought  him  into  this.  In  a  way.  He  was  only  a  business 


NO.  26  JAYNE  STREET  343 

man  when  I  married  him  and  made  him  my  manager. 
With  an  ordinary  wife  and  a  business  and  a  family  all 
in  one  place,  in  one  groove,  Julius  would  have  been 
another  Bruce  Havens,  perhaps.  But  in  the  theatrical 
business,  all  this  —  this  —  'juice.'  That's  what  the  elec 
tricians  call  it,  I  believe.  This  high  pressure  of  creative- 
ness  has  never  meant  but  one  thing  to  the  people  who  are 
not  creative.  Julius  has  n't  any  gifts  but  just  business 
managing;  he  has  n't  got  the  —  the  fiber  that  somehow 
holds  us  players  together.  Oh,  well,  I  can't  analyze  and 
explain  the  way  Rose  does,  but  I  feel  responsible  for 
Julius." 

"And  whatever  he  does,  I  can  see  that  you'd  just 
take  him  back  — " 

"Ah,  my  dear,  I've  never  given  him  up!" 

"Well,  I  haven't  Adam,  except  officially.  Until  he 
sees  that  a  woman  has  some  value  besides  what  he 
thinks  of  her. " 

"Oh,  my  dear!"  But  with  a  gesture  of  her  speaking 
hands,  Mrs.  Sherrod  gave  the  subject  up  completely. 

§70 

It  had  been  a  relief  to  talk.  Always  in  talking  to  Made- 
Ion  one  had  the  sensation  of  breadth  and  a  kind  of  buoy 
ancy  that  was  not  a  mere  effect,  like  the  sparkle  of  a 
glass  of  Burgundy.  It  was  more  like  a  realization  of  a 
power  in  life  itself  to  hold  you  up  and  carry  you  along 
if  you  trusted  it.  Madelon  had  n't  made  Neith's  own 
situation  seem  more  heroic,  but  it  seemed  of  itself  more 


344  NO.  26  JAYNE  STREET 

reasonable,  more  a  part  of  things.  It  was  something  that 
would  be  the  more  easily  endured  and  come  to  a  more 
satisfactory  conclusion  the  less  one  felt  about  it,  the 
more  one  simply  and  unaffectedly  insisted  on  the  prin 
ciple  involved. 

Neith  herself  felt  freed  somehow  from  the  necessity  of 
taking  a  moral  attitude  toward  Adam.  One  could  still 
love  him  and  see  him  through,  as  one  might  through  the 
crisis  of  an  illness.  One  felt  more  certain  of  his  coming 
through. 

And  then,  of  course,  she  wanted  more  than  anything 
else  to  find  Adam  and  tell  him  these  things.  As  it  had 
been  in  the  time  of  their  engagement,  every  lift  of  emo 
tion  or  new  breadth  of  perception  turned  her  toward 
him,  demanded  the  moment  of  communication  for  com 
pletion.  It  was  so  with  every  stimulating  thing  she  en 
countered,  the  pictures  in  the  Winter  Exhibition,  the 
new  French  tenor,  the  slim,  curled  moon  between  the 
cliffs  of  the  Avenue.  She  would  be  crossing  the  Square 
thinking  of  nothing,  and  her  attention  would  be  caught 
by  the  prismed  drip  of  icicles  from  the  crystal-guarded 
trees  —  and  of  a  sudden  there  would  be  the  still  space 
of  Beauty  in  her  soul  and  the  need  of  Adam  to  com 
plete  it. 

And  all  this  time  there  was  no  word.  She  got  over  her 
sense  of  the  essential  impropriety  of  talking  to  Rose 
Matlock.  She  wanted  to  talk  to  Rose.  They  would  talk 
about  Adam,  they  would  love  him  into  Tightness. 

And  then  she  would  revolt,  savoring  in  such  an  atti- 


NO.  26  JAYNE  STREET  345 

tude  the  sickishness  of  sentimentality.  If  it  came  to 
conventions,  was  n't  that  one  of  floating  a  man  into 
righteousness  on  the  tide  of  some  woman's  love,  a  more 
abominable  convention  than  the  secretive  pride  which 
Adam  had  tried  to  force  on  Rose,  the  tradition  of  be 
ing  too  proud  to  insist  on  her  injury? 

But  if  she  could  just  see  him!  She  was  ashamed  of  the 
relief  it  gave  her  merely  by  an  accident  of  conversation 
to  hear  his  name. 

Was  it  necessary,  she  wondered,  to  have  cut  herself 
off  so  from  all  touch  of  him?  They  might  meet  in  the 
ordinary  way  as  friends.  It  came  to  this  finally,  that  she 
took  to  going  to  those  places  where  she  had  been  with 
him,  little  tea-shops,  cafes  on  side  streets  where  they 
met  exponents  of  the  Social  Revolution,  revolving  harm 
lessly  among  their  satellites.  And  at  last  she  remembered 
the  eating-place  that  had  been  a  slave  quarter  where 
they  had  gone,  and  where  she  had  met  the  burning  torch 
of  New  Russia  whose  name  was  now  in  everybody's 
mouth.  Once  there,  she  had  a  remarkable  sensation  of 
having  lost  Adam;  as  one  loses  the  spoor  of  a  trail.  As  if 
this  were  the  last  she  had  seen  or  was  to  see  of  him.  She 
formed  the  habit  of  going  back  there  as  one  does  to  the 
point  at  which  some  lost  possession  was  missed.  One 
evening  she  was  rewarded  by  meeting  Sadie  and  Fleeta 
Spence,  dining  in  company  with  a  permanently  imma 
ture  young  man  in  whom  Fleeta  appeared  remarkably 
interested. 

They  were  all  going  over  to  Cooper  Union  afterward 


346  NO.  26  JAYNE  STREET 

to  hear  Lanier  Stevens  talk  about  Russia.  He  had  been 
over  there,  a  fortnight,  at  least,  and  he  was  going  to  tell 
them  what  to  think  about  the  Proletariat  Revolution. 
Neith  remembered  this  Stevens;  he  had  been  the  editor 
who  had  accepted  Frear's  first  articles  about  municipal 
governments  abroad.  Stevens  himself  had  been  a  philo 
sophical  journalist  in  the  days  when  one's  sense  of  the 
impending  social  change  was  expressed  by  an  extraor 
dinary  lucidity  about  the  moral  turpitude  of  things  as 
they  were.  She  had  heard  Adam  say  more  than  once 
how  much  he  owed,  both  as  writer  and  thinker,  to 
Stevens. 

Neith  went  off  to  Cooper  Union  with  Sadie,  in  the 
wake  of  Fleeta  and  her  young  man.  There  was  the  first 
haunting  touch  of  the  new  season  in  the  air.  Neith  re 
membered  exactly  how  she  had  felt  a  year  ago,  crossing 
the  Square  with  the  new  lease  of  Jayne  Street  in  her 
bag.  Then  she  remembered  Van  Harwood's  joke  about 
it.  "Jane"  Street.  Should  she  come  to  that? 

But  under  all,  like  the  breath  of  spring  under  the  chill 
air,  there  was  a  secret  hope.  With  his  interest  in  Stevens 
and  in  Russia,  it  was  not  possible  that  Adam  would 
keep  away  from  that  meeting.  He  would  probably  sit  on 
the  platform  after  the  custom  of  Cooper  Institute  lec 
tures,  which  always  had  to  be  certified,  as  it  were,  by 
the  largest  possible  number  of  believers  placed  promi 
nently  about  the  platform. 

When  they  reached  the  building,  Sadie  found  that  she 
must  go  around  back  of  the  platform  to  see  Direck 


NO.  26  JAYNE  STREET  347 

Kendries.  Neith  recalled  many  such  excursions  with 
Adam  Frear  to  the  backs  of  platforms  where  one  met 
distinguished  speakers  informally  and  called  them  by 
their  first  names.  The  meeting  was  just  on  the  point  of 
beginning.  She  did  not  see  Adam,  but  the  Kendries  saw 
her  and  drew  her  into  the  fringe  of  the  speaker's  train. 
She  found  herself  seated  just  back  of  one  of  the  pillars 
that  divide  the  platform  from  its  shadowed,  rear  re 
cesses,  staring  out  at  the  usual  Cooper  Institute  audi 
ence. 

Neith  kept  taking  surreptitious  glances  about  the 
platform,  which  she  could  not  wholly  see  from  where 
she  sat,  and  trying  to  shut  out  from  her  attention  some 
thing,  a  worrying,  dull,  stinging  something  like  an  un 
identified  aching  tooth,  which  kept  up  an  incessant 
claim  for  recognition.  Yet  at  the  same  time  it  was  some 
thing  that  she  fought  off,  that  she  deliberately  kept  as 
far  as  possible  outside  the  pale  of  recognition.  She  lo 
cated  it  presently  in  the  speaker's  voice,  some  nuance 
of  emphasis  or  inflection  which  reminded  her,  with  the 
effect  of  never  having  before  noted  the  item  on  which 
the  resemblance  was  based,  of  Adam  Frear. 

Stevens  was  describing  the  Trotzky-Lenine  Revolu 
tion  with  considerable  emotion,  not  the  emotion  of  a 
revolutionist,  perhaps,  but  of  a  lover  of  revolutions,  the 
slightly  overripe  accent  of  infatuation.  There  were  sev 
eral  people  moving  about  in  the  rear  of  the  platform,  as 
there  were  so  often  at  Cooper.  In  an  effort  to  overcome 
the  slight  stir  they  made,  Neith  herself  moved  forward 


348  NO.  26  JAYNE  STREET 

and  placed  herself  beside  the  foremost  row.  From  here 
presently  she  made  out  a  half-familiar  figure,  searching 
from  the  shadow  of  one  of  the  pilasters  for  a  better  seat. 
The  figure  turned  and  resolved  itself  into  Rose  Matlock. 

For  the  moment,  Stevens  and  the  whole  Russian 
Revolution  faded  in  the  spark  of  their  intense,  their  al 
most  snatching  interest  in  each  other.  It  carried  them, 
without  any  conscious  volition,  a  step  or  two  farther 
back  into  the  half  privacy  of  the  rear  platform. 

Out  in  front  between  the  pilasters  they  could  see  the 
speaker,  a  short  man,  leaning  forward  with  the  urgency 
of  iteration,  and  beyond  him,  obscuring  rings  of  faces, 
faces  of  men  badly  used  and  not  well-dressed,  cautious, 
aflame,  incredulous,  but  all  caught,  oh,  unmistakably 
snared  and  held  and  faintly  fatuous. 

"I  have  been  wanting  to  see  you,"  Neith  found  her 
self  saying.  She  fancied  there  had  passed  one  or  two  con 
ventional  phrases  before  that,  but  she  had  no  idea  what 
they  were.  "I  would  have  written,  only  it  seemed  un 
necessary.  Mr.  Frear  would  have  told  you  that  my  de 
cision  had  been  in  keeping  with  your  suggestion  that  I 
was  just  to  keep  off  and  to  wait." 

"He  told  me  that." 

Nothing  more  coming,  and  Rose  Matlock  continuing 
to  look  at  her  rather  steadily  with  her  far-seeing  eyes, 
Neith  said  all  that  the  occasion  seemed  to  offer  her  to 
say.  "And  I  knew  that  you  would  neither  of  you  leave 
me  in  the  dark  —  I  knew  in  good  time  I  should  hear  — " 

"Then  you  have  n't  heard?" 


NO.  26  JAYNE  STREET  349 

"Heard  — what?" 

"He  has  gone." 

"But  .  .  .  gone?  Where?" 

"Over  There!  Russia,  most  people  think.  I  supposed 
you  would  know." 

"Since  that  letter,  the  lawyer's,  I  have  n't  seen  him; 
you  must  have  known  that  I  would  n't." 

"Yes.  He  told  me  that.  I  suppose  that  was  what  de 
cided  him." 

They  moved  back  with  common  consent  toward  the 
door  that  led  into  an  anteroom  where  they  could  talk 
without  disturbing  the  listeners  on  the  platform. 

"You  mean  that  he  did  n't  see  — " 

"Oh,  he  saw  everything!  And  saw  it  wrong.  He 
thought  I  had  worked  to  break  off  his  engagement  to 
you  for  no  reason  but  that  I  could  n't  have  him  myself. 
He  believed  about  me,  about  our  attitude,  what  the 
average  American  believes  about  what's  going  on  out 
there"  —  she  indicated  the  vast,  enamored  audience  — 
"believes,  I  mean,  that  it  is  all  hysterical  irrationalism 
and  disappointed  greed  of  possession.  I  ought  to  tell  you, 
though"  —  her  gaze  came  back  and  rested  thoughtfully 
on  the  girl  at  her  side  —  "that  I  think  he  suffered  very 
much.  It  was  all  so  unexpected  to  him  to  be  put  in  the 
wrong  like  that.  And  he  suffered  on  your  account."  She 
saw  that  the  younger  woman  could  not  speak,  and  open 
ing  the  door,  she  beckoned  her  into  the  stark,  unfur 
nished  anteroom,  where  in  the  absence  of  chairs  they 
walked  up  and  down  in  silence. 


350  NO.  26  JAYNE  STREET 

"You  don't  know,  then,  where  he  has  gone?"  Neith 
ventured  at  last. 

Miss  Matlock  shook  her  head.  "People  say  Russia 
simply  because  that  has  been  for  months  his  main  inter 
est,  and  he  has  been  with  Stevens  almost  continually 
since  his  return.  But  Mr.  Kendries  heard  that  Adam 
had  gone  to  the  Far  East.  Anywhere,  away  from  us." 

"I  suppose,"  said  Neith,  "we  were  rather  terrible." 

"I  believe  he  found  us  so." 

"And  yet  what  did  we  want  but  what  he  wants  for 
the  whole  world!" 

"Ah,  does  he?  Listen  to  that! "  She  opened  the  door  on 
certain  high,  fanatic  inflections  of  the  speaker's  voice, 
and  short,  half  yelps  of  approval  from  the  audience. 
"I  don't  know  how  it  was  between  you  and  Adam," 
she  said,  shutting  the  door  again  and  beginning  her  rest 
less  pacing  up  and  down.  "But  me  he  never  loved.  No 
more  did  he  —  and  most  of  those  out  there  —  love  eco 
nomic  justice.  They  are  enamored  of  it.  They  love  it  as 
moths  love  a  lamp.  They  love  the  effect  of  ideals  of  free 
dom  and  justice  on  themselves."  Neith  nodded  slowly, 
she  had  already  identified  the  hazy  suggestion  of  fatu 
ousness  in  the  speaker's  tone.  "You  must  not  think, 
Miss  Schuyler,  that  I  have  let  this  thing  throw  me  out 
of  my  mind,"  she  heard  Rose  saying.  "It  seems  to  me, 
indeed,  that  it  will  be  the  means  of  finding  my  mind, 
getting  the  use  of  it.  Maybe  I  Ve  been  —  enamored, 
too!  That  man  out  there,  Stevens,  has  been  a  leader. 
Adam  was  one.  Well,  I  was  led.  And  now  I  am  going  to 


NO.  26  JAYNE  STREET  351 

find  out  if  we  are  led  by  the  blind.  Freedom-blinded. 
That's  why  I  am  going  —  Over  There." 

"To  Adam,  you  mean?"  Neith  wondered. 

"Ah,  I've  told  you  I  don't  know  where  he  is.  I  am 
going,  I  must,  to  find  out  where  we  are  going.  Whether 
in  fact  we  are  going  anywhere!  What  else  is  there  for 
me?"  She  looked,  indeed,  incredibly  stripped  and  bare, 
the  root  word  of  woman,  unrecognizably  archaic. 

"It's  much  easier  for  you,  Miss  Schuyler."  She  stood, 
from  her  superior  height,  looking  down  on  Neith  not 
unkindly.  "All  that  has  happened  to  you  is  that  some 
one  you  cared  for  has  turned  out  to  be  less  than  you 
hoped.  But  for  me,  something  that  I  have  done  has 
turned  out  to  be  the  falsification  of  my  most  sacred  con 
victions.  It  has  left  me  nothing  to  do  but  to  be  faithful. 
Faithful,  I  mean,  to  whatever  the  experience  has  meant 
to  me.  I'm  going  Over  There  to  try  and  find  out  the 
utmost  that  it  can  mean." 

It  occurred  to  Neith  that  she  knew  now  what  people 
meant  when  they  said  men  were  afraid  to  give  power  to 
women.  Quite  aside  and  irrelevantly  she  recalled  some 
thing  she  had  heard  of  the  praying-mantis  that  devours 
her  mate,  pulling  limb  from  limb.  She  saw  that  Adam 
Frear  was  to  suffer  in  effect  such  a  dismemberment  for 
the  fructification  of  Rose's  soul.  What  she  said  to  Rose 
Matlock  was,  "You  must  not  think  that  I  have  missed 
what  it  all  means  to  all  of  us.  I  was  Over  There,  you  see, 
from  the  beginning." 

"Yes.  I  remember.  I  suppose  that  accounts  for  your 


352  NO.  26  JAYNE  STREET 

being  able  to  meet  me  like  this.  I  have  n't  forgotten  that 
you  might  have  agreed  with  Adam.  You  might  have 
expected  me  to  have  'pride." 

She  went  back  and  opened  the  door  a  crack,  listening. 
"I  must  hear  what  Stevens  says,  and  how  it  is  received," 
she  stated  baldly.  "It  is  a  part  of  what  I  have  set  my 
self  to  do.  If  it  should  turn  out  that  we  women  are  to 
blame  for  it  after  all;  if  we  have  just,  stupidly,  never 
distinguished  between  men's  sentiments  about  —  all 
the  fine  things  that  we  see  have  to  be  done  in  the  world, 
and  their  will  to  do !  If  we  should  find  ourselves  involved 
in  a  Revolution  here  in  America  which  should  be  actu 
ally  as  helpless  to  effect  economic  justice  as  Adam  has 
been  to  achieve  any  kind  of  Tightness  between  us  —  You 
see,  don't  you,  why  I  have  to  know?" 

"I  think"  —  Neith  had  all  the  courage  of  conviction 
—  "that  we  both  know.  But  I  see  that  you  have  to 
know  it  in  terms  that  men  will  listen  to.  That  lawyer  — 
they  would  n't  have  listened  to  us!" 

Miss  Matlock's  hand  was  on  the  door.  She  came  back 
and  stood  close  to  the  younger  woman  for  a  moment  in 
which  they  met  one  another's  look  high  and  above  the 
wreck  of  all  their  outraged  reticence. 

"I  couldn't  have  hoped,"  said  Rose  at  last,  "that 
you  would  have  met  me  like  this.  No  wonder  Adam 
loved  you." 

Neith  was  entirely  honest.  "I  am  not  sure  now  that 
he  did.  He  was  in  love.  Shall  I  be  seeing  you  again?" 

"I  think  not."  They  shook  hands.   Miss  Matlock 


NO.  26  JAYNE  STREET  353 

moved  toward  the  door,  and  again  she  turned  back.  "If 
you  find  out  where  he  is,  write  to  him.  He'll  come  back 
and  tell  you." 

"No.  If  he  does,  he'll  come  back  without  being  writ 
ten  to,"  Neith  insisted.  And  as  she  said  it  she  felt  the 
future  at  her  heart  like  a  small,  gnawing  worm. 


THE  END 


(Cfee 

CAMBRIDGE  .  MASSACHUSETTS 
U    .    S    .    A 


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